Wuhan - 4: An Inn Worth Taking
"So let me get this straight. The Mangeum Lord said that if you want your debts repaid, you have to run a business? And if you fail, the entire debt lands on your shoulders? And you agreed to that?"
Hearing the full story of what had passed between me and the Mangeum Lord, Lim Hayeon was struck speechless.
"At the rate we sell Dangga Pungun, paying off the Daseogak debt would take a lifetime no matter how many copies flew off the shelves. Having every last coin of it wiped clean — that's a bargain worth considering."
Strictly speaking, the trial the Mangeum Lord had devised worked against Mangeum Jeonjang itself. If I won, a mountain of debt would vanish in a single stroke; if I lost, the exchange would merely claw back its principal.
"I've seen the ledgers, so I know... Should I head back to Yichang this very moment and haul the Dangga Pungun stock here myself?"
"Dangga Pungun is out. That was one of the Mangeum Lord's conditions."
"Then what am I supposed to do?"
Lim Hayeon asked, her voice wound tight with anxiety.
"There's time enough to shape a business plan. I mean to rack my brains over it for a while."
Perhaps I could dust off my old trade as a street storyteller — turn Dangga Pungun into a stage play and sell tickets. If Lim Hayeon and I played off each other well, it might make for a genuinely entertaining show.
For extra revenue, I could sell medicine as well. Slap the Tang Clan name on it, and it might fly off the shelves even in Yichang.
Of course, I'd be shipped straight back to the Tang Clan for my troubles. And while selling books alongside might work, that alone would never satisfy a Mangeum Lord who had ordered me to build a business.
"Well... if it comes to it, my novels..."
"Hm?"
"C-could I sell my novels and count the profits toward it?"
Lim Hayeon said it with a stiff, fixed expression, as though she had just wrestled some monumental decision to the ground.
"Hahahah."
"Wh-why are you laughing! Y-you never know, it might work!"
Perhaps it was the sight of her grand resolve answered with laughter — Lim Hayeon flushed crimson and spoke, embarrassed.
"I'm not mocking you, so don't misunderstand. I explained poorly. It turns out bookstores are off the table."
I laughed because she was adorable.
"Grr! You could have led with that..."
Lips jutting out, Lim Hayeon muttered and grumbled, as though she regretted offering at all.
"Hahahah. Stranded in Wuhan with no connections and no backing, even the things I'm good at are off the table — so let's put our heads together."
Before returning to the inn, it had felt as though I'd be sitting these trials alone, an army of one. But knowing there was someone who fretted over me and could lend a hand made the whole thing feel bearable.
I gazed at her the way an adventurer eyes a priest he's just recruited — the kind who buffs the entire party simply by standing there.
"D-do your best."
Perhaps my stare had been too heavy. Lim Hayeon ducked away from my eyes and gave a small nod.
And when, exactly, was our food arriving?
"Big brother. I've run the errand you gave me."
As I sat at the table waiting for our food, a familiar Joseon tongue drifted over.
I turned — and there stood a black-haired man. The same Joseon fellow who'd been begging off Brother Ahn before we entered the inn, if I wasn't mistaken.
"Good work. Did it get delivered? And the money?"
"Here you are. But, big brother, about that..."
The man glanced at the little children who appeared to be his own, unable to lift his head toward the innkeeper.
"Tsk. For labor like that, this wouldn't cover a toe's worth of trouble... I'll bowl up some rice soup, so at least feed the children before you go."
"Thank you, big brother!"
So the Joseon innkeeper, Mr. Ahn, had a generous streak after all. He'd likely invented that little errand as an excuse to put a meal in front of a man who'd come begging. Were there quite a few Joseon folk in Wuhan, then?
"It seems a lot of Joseon people like you come around here. I noticed a few more arriving earlier, too."
As if reading my mind, Lim Hayeon whispered close against my ear.
"It's an inn run by a Joseon man, so I imagine they come for a taste of home."
"They looked more like beggars than customers, though."
"Hmm."
This was a world that started discriminating at the first flash of black hair. Come to think of it, another Joseon man I'd passed earlier had gaped at my fine clothes in open astonishment. Were they all living hand to mouth?
"Little brother Kang! Hahaha! What's this? Whispering sweet nothings over here?"
Brother Ahn set our food down on the table with a booming laugh.
"It's nothing of the sort!"
"The young lady's quite the bashful one. Is she shy at night as well?"
With a sly twist of his lips, Brother Ahn asked me in Joseon speech, safely beyond Lim Hayeon's understanding.
"At night? She bawls her eyes out."
After all, she had come barging in one night — and how she had wept on that bed.
"Hahahah! I knew it."
"What are you two saying in Joseon?!"
"That Miss Hayeon is the loveliest woman I've laid eyes on in all of Wuhan, of course. I gave him my full agreement."
"That doesn't sound right at all..."
Lim Hayeon looked unconvinced, but after a few furtive glances my way, her shoulders straightened ever so slightly at the flattery, and she pressed no further.
"Brother Ahn. It seems Wuhan has quite the Joseon population."
I asked, Brother Ahn not yet having left our table.
"You know how it is, little brother. The place is crawling with Central Plains folk — means even Joseon men like us can scrape together coin doing odd jobs."
So there were, it seemed, a fair number of Joseon laboring away at hard work in Wuhan.
"Oh?! Joseon? You know our Brother Ahn?"
The man who'd finished his errand and was noisily putting away rice soup with his children sidled up to us.
"Ah — yes. A man from my hometown. We happened to cross paths today."
"Well, I never! Our Brother Ahn here leads the Joseon community in Wuhan!"
"Brother Ahn does?"
"He's one of the rare Joseon who's actually made good in this city."
"Ahem! Now, look at you!"
The innkeeper chuckled and cuffed the man's shoulder in sheepish embarrassment. The inn he kept was certainly shabby — but the man himself was no easy mark.
This was Wuhan, in Hubei Province. Neither a trade road to Joseon nor a coastline anywhere near it — a place where people with troubles like mine drifted to and washed up.
For a man to run an inn in a city like this was the equivalent of some penniless foreign laborer opening a fine restaurant in the heart of Seoul back home.
"My, my. A big success in Wuhan, brother, and I've put down roots of my own in Yichang. Us Namwon folk must have something special."
To hoist Brother Ahn as high as I could, I bantered away with a face full of smiles.
"Little brother! You said you run a small bookstore in Yichang? Now that's a marvel. What is it about us Namwon people?"
"Could it be anything other than the mountain spirit of Jirisan, which every last one of us grew up breathing?"
I delivered it with the grave sincerity of an elementary schooler who believed every word of his school anthem.
"Heheheh! The Central Plains lot wouldn't know it, but our Jirisan is powerful medicine indeed!"
"Haha! No wonder we Namwon folk thrive so stubbornly wherever we wander!"
I carried on merrily, playing the part of some black-haired foreigner of Jirisan stock — a man whose family had held land in Namwon for three generations before a crooked gamble cleaned them out and left him wandering the world.
"Haah... Though I suppose I'll be shutting the doors soon."
"What's this all of a sudden?"
"I came up from Joseon, started out a waiter in the Central Plains, and with the cooking trade I learned back home I scratched my way this far — but the inn, well..."
"Business is bad?"
There did seem to be precious few customers.
"It's run by a black-hair, you see. That keeps a good few people away. Even so, an inn sitting right in the middle of a residential quarter could scrape by on folks too idle to cook at home — and then those bastards had to go and... Well, welcome!"
Without ever finishing why he had to close, the innkeeper turned to greet the swinging door.
Huh? That man—
He was someone I'd seen at the docks that very morning. A Haomen man, Simun division.
"The Simun Hyangju calls for you."
I hadn't so much as lifted my spoon yet.
The Wuhan Haomen kept no branch master.
Instead, the Hyangju — the masters who commanded each of Haomen's divisions — gathered to settle every matter, great and small. The branches of Hubei took the Hyangju's orders, and yet each fended for itself all the same.
That was because Haomen, unlike the great sects, had never been built from the top down. It had grown from gatherings of waiters, courtesans, coachmen, thieves, and gamblers.
We passed through a restaurant so vast it would have turned heads even in Yichang, and were shown into a richly appointed chamber where the Simun Hyangju waited.
Even the pillars were carved with every manner of fanciful beast imaginable — apparently Wuhan's Haomen turned a handsome profit.
I opened the door to the Hyangju's chamber with a taut face, braced for the gnarled scowl of some sinister dark-sect elder. What greeted us instead was a plump, comfortable-looking man who seemed for all the world a franchise restaurant owner — the kind who could weather his wife's nagging at home without flinching and still captain the office team come morning.
"Those Domun dogs have lost their minds. Attacking their own kin?"
Reading the report brought back from Wushan, the Simun Hyangju crumpled the paper in his fist, teeth apparently on edge.
"There's no smoking gun, but the circumstantial case is airtight."
The Domun rebellion. A hand this strong would make a fine joker to hold in reserve for Lim Hayeon.
"So the Domun bastards were always going to come out like this... Very well. You there — Branch Master Gwak's deputy. You walk in carrying intelligence this fine. Name what you want."
"Miss Hayeon was simply the victim of Domun's schemes. We ask that you help free her from her runaway-courtesan status."
"No."
Flatly refused.
"Wh-why not?"
"Might I ask the reason?"
Promise a man his heart's desire, then slam the door in his face — if there wasn't a reason, that was a flippant way for the head of an organization to behave.
"I can guess why the Domun dogs pulled this shit, mind you. But go poking at it half-cocked and it's the incident from ten years ago all over again."
Was he speaking of the rebellion that had once blown rivers of blood through Haomen?
"You mean we're to pretend none of it happened?"
"Pulling a trick this dirty means they've readied themselves to be caught. Without decisive proof, we'd be the ones bleeding. For now, the best play is to keep eyes on Domun and see whether they try anything else."
"Then Miss Hayeon's problem simply cannot be solved?"
So in the end — no hard proof, no spilling of blood between kin.
"Domun is hunting this girl with their teeth bared. For us to step in on half-formed suspicions and put them on their guard is worse than doing nothing at all."
"But the Wushan Haomen was slaughtered!"
"Then go cry to the Gimun girls, or go take Domun to task."
However earnest Lim Hayeon's pleading voice, the Simun Hyangju's stayed cold.
"There must be some way. Anything."
"Hmm. A way, is it... Kang Yunho, was it? You. Have you bedded that girl?"
"Wh-what sort of question is that?!"
Lim Hayeon's voice shook, thrown by the utterly unexpected question.
"We are absolutely nothing of the sort!"
"What did you say?"
Why was she looking at me?
"Heh heh. So you're nothing of the sort. Fine. Out of respect for Branch Master Gwak, I'll keep the girl protected for the time being. But the rest of it falls to you, Kang Yunho."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Kang Yunho of Daseogak. Keeper of Yichang's finest bookstore and the Tea Book Pavilion. I'll grant that Branch Master Gwak has sent Simun a promising piece of talent. But that doesn't mean I've acknowledged you."
"Acknowledged me, you say?"
"It means you're not one of mine. So give me a reason to help you. Show me what you can do. Do that, and I'll gladly spend my strength on a woman belonging to one of my own people."
That was the whole of my conversation with the Simun Hyangju.
"This one and that one — how are there so many people aching to see my 'abilities'?"
Should I just show them a status window?
"Status window! Staaatus windoooow! STATUS!"
If I'd had one, I'd have gladly flashed it. Unsurprisingly, nothing appeared.
"What on earth are you muttering? Are you ill?!"
Lim Hayeon reappeared late, having finished her business, and asked with a badly startled face.
"Coo-coo-coo!"
"You lot — back off! Keep your distance!"
"Cooo..."
At Lim Hayeon's single word, the dozens of carrier pigeons rose into the sky looking thoroughly deflated.
"I was so frustrated I'd shout anything. Speaking of which — where did all these carrier pigeons come from?"
She hadn't brought a single one when we arrived.
"They're the flock I sent from Wushan to Wuhan. I tried handing them back, but once they return to the wild they're just ordinary pigeons again — sturdy, sharp-eyed ones — so I've been torn over whether to simply let them go."
If she traveled dragging that whole flock behind her, she wouldn't be the Shadowless Divine Thief anymore — she'd be the Pigeon Mom.
"They're rather clever little beasts, aren't they?"
"Once in a great while one hatches that understands human speech, like Gugu. The rest can only serve as dependable, clever carrier pigeons. That's why I never trouble myself to name them."
So they were like mass-produced spirit beasts, then.
I nodded and turned my steps toward the inn where Lim Hayeon and I were staying.
"'An ability that would earn me a place among Simun's own.'"
Mangeum Jeonjang, and now Haomen's Simun besides. It felt like being shoved to the next question of an exam before I'd even finished the listening section.
"Don't overthink it. Just keep your eyes on Daseogak. And if it truly can't be..."
Lim Hayeon let the words trail off, as if her lips refused to carry them further. There she went again, reaching for surrender.
"We'll solve both. So no talk of giving up — just help me, and help me hard."
In moments like these, cheering a person on was kind enough, but what really mattered was letting her know she was needed. Because it's by taking another's hand that a person finds the courage to stand on both feet.
I told Lim Hayeon not to worry — or meant to.
"...Then about what you said earl—"
"Knock it off, you bastards!!! My shop is ruined!!!"
Lim Hayeon's words were severed by a bellow from far off.
"Isn't that coming from the inn we're staying at?"
"What in the world?"
We raced to the inn to find the inside already a battlefield.
"Aigooooooo!"
Turning my head, I found the innkeeper, Mr. Ahn, wailing to high heaven. What on earth had happened?
"Ahem. Innkeeper. Here — repairs."
"Wh-why must you people brawl in my inn every single time?!"
"We shed our first blood here, didn't we? Only proper to repay it in blood here, too!"
"You do it because there's hardly any risk of payback when you wreck MY place, that's why!!!"
So murim men had fought it out inside the inn.
Within stood five or six sword-bearing martial artists — along with several other martial artists who were already corpses.
Apparently, this wasn't even the first such occasion.
"Getting high and mighty, are we, you black-haired barbarian cur? Oy! Cough up some coin! Get the place patched before we come back for our next brawl!"
"With this pittance you couldn't buy a single chair!"
"Oh, quit your whining. Let's go. A fight's only proper in an inn — that's what I always say."
"You said it!"
Whether or not the innkeeper glared after them with frantic eyes, the martial artists departed in the merriest of moods.
"Brother — what in the world happened?"
I asked Brother Ahn, who was dragging severed limbs into a corner with slumped shoulders.
"Little brother... as of today, I'm done with this business. I can't keep this inn standing, not with murim men around."
Perhaps he couldn't bear to show a crying face to a younger man from home; Brother Ahn turned his head aside, shoulders shaking.
So this was why he had to shut his doors — martial artists brawling in his inn. Truly, murim folk were of no use to anyone's livelihood.
This was exactly why, in a murim world, the one trade you should never take up was innkeeper.
Hold on. The inn?
In a flash, my mind began assembling the problem and its conditions.
What was I missing? Connections in Wuhan. Local roots. What was required of me? Simun's trial. Mangeum Jeonjang's trial.
What did I have? What could I attempt? Where could my advantages actually bite?
Yes.
"Brother."
There was a way to answer every one of my problems in a single stroke.
"What is it?"
"I'm buying this inn."