The Proposal - 1
"Ever since I started ordering food delivered, I simply can't bring myself to go out and eat anymore."
"Tell me about it. After dragging myself home from work, why would I head all the way back out when I can just have it brought to me?"
The delivery food culture built on the Giosugu pigeons was taking root as a rousing success.
"Order's in! Three spicy pork stir-fries and one squid-and-pork bulgogi!"
"One jjajangmyeon and one jjampong, please!"
This was the inn Chef An had purchased at a relative bargain with a food business in mind. Even with the place nursed back to health, a residential neighborhood meant it would have had to limp along as a half-measure, its lodging trade abandoned — but starting up deliveries changed the story entirely.
Of course, it wasn't without its share of trial and error.
"When we set the dishes outside, people keep stealing them."
"Switch deliveries over to plain wooden bowls, and when you drop an order off, ask what time they'll be home so you can collect them then. If that fails, tell them to leave the bowls out for you."
"Boss, the handwriting on this order slip is completely illegible."
"That customer only ever orders the one thing. From now on, keep a separate sheet with everyone's usual order written out and send it along with the pigeon. For bad handwriting too — just leave blanks to mark so anyone can read it."
"Yes, sir!"
With each round of trial and error, the customers and the revenue climbed higher by the day.
"I'm back. What are the Samgu brothers doing here?"
My office on the third floor. Lim Hayeon had just returned from her outing and, startled by the unexpected faces inside, asked the question.
"Greetings to you, Sister-in-law!"
"I-I keep telling you, I'm not your sister-in-law. What have you all been up to?"
"The Samgu brothers brought the letters sent from Yichang. Ilgu — any trouble at the docks these days?"
I gestured toward the letters that had come with the Seocheon Escort Agency's shipments, then asked after the brothers' situation.
"Thanks to you securing us work through the Seocheon Escort Agency, Association Leader, more and more merchants are trusting us with their cargo!"
My poor ears. There was truly no need to stand ramrod straight like pillars of a great mansion.
"It's all thanks to you, Association Leader!"
"The Joseon folk working the port sing your praises every single day!"
"Doing well is all I ask. Anything unusual lately? Any developments worth noting?"
When doing business in a foreign land, information was treasure. Half on a hunch, I put the question to the brothers.
At my words, Igu and Samgu wore expressions of pure bafflement, while Choi Ilgu — driven, perhaps, by the desperation of an eldest brother covering for his lacking younger siblings — visibly wrung his brain for an answer before opening his mouth.
"If it's something unusual... today, while we were unloading cargo from the ship in from Yichang, a woman came crawling out of a jar."
"A woman out of a jar?"
At the mention of a jar woman, I glanced at Lim Hayeon, who had been listening quietly beside me. Following my gaze, all three brothers' eyes snapped onto her.
"Why are you all looking at me?!"
Someone's remembering the old days.
"A stowaway, was she?"
I asked Ilgu.
"We assumed so too — figured we'd struck it lucky — but then people from the Mangeum Jeonjang came by to apologize. Said she was a guest who got comfortable inside the jar and fell asleep."
Choi Ilgu shot me a look asking whether they weren't being cheated of the bounty for catching a stowaway, then added that the Mangeum people had slipped them a little money on the side.
"Ha ha. Now there's an unusual woman for you."
After all, a woman I know once slept quite comfortably in a jar herself.
"Nnngh... why are you looking at meee."
Old memories had apparently caught up with Lim Hayeon as well; she answered in a voice like something dragging across the floor and buried her head deep.
"Anything else?"
"Yes! Thanks to you, Association Leader, everyone's happy with their work these days, hard as it is!"
"Good. Head on back."
"Sir!"
"Lady Hayeon — did your business with the Haomen go smoothly?"
Waving off the Samgu brothers as they filed out, I asked Lim Hayeon — head still bowed — whether she'd accomplished what she'd set out to do today.
"The Simun side looks utterly astonished by your movements. The Gi-mun, not yet."
Hadn't I said the odds of being caught ran high if she visited the Gi-mun?
"So the Simun hasn't formally acknowledged you yet, I see."
It seemed the business would need expanding a little further. I spread open one of the letters stacked on the table.
"They were still plenty astonished, mind you. May I read the letters?"
Letters addressed to a private individual were not meant for other eyes. I gave a nod and passed along one piece of news flown in from Yichang.
"The Haomen came looking for you several more times, it seems. The Domun apparently doesn't know you're here yet, my lady."
The letter recounted how the Haomen had been given a bloody nose by the Seocheon Escort Agency and withdrawn — until that final visit, when they brought a master along with them.
So things had gone to the brink with a Haomen master before they finally pulled back. If she'd stayed behind at the print shop, it might well have been Lim Hayeon dragged away instead.
I chose not to tell her the parts that would only breed unease.
"Then as long as the Simun keeps the secret of my whereabouts, we can buy more time for a while."
"If the business keeps thriving, this may well resolve itself."
If my business flourished from here, the Simun would come to acknowledge her. And with the Simun lending its weight, they could mediate the standoff between the Gi-mun and the Domun.
Perhaps she'd arrived at the same thought, for Lim Hayeon offered a small smile threaded with hope.
"I certainly hope so. Goodness, though, there are an awful lot of letters here? You must correspond with a great many people."
The burden that had been weighing her down seemed to have lightened somewhat as she pointed at the towering stack of correspondence on the table.
"Some of these are letters sent to me. But there are others as well."
Pressing a hand to my forehead as though pained by a headache, I shook my head.
I had letters of my own that needed receiving, so I'd told them to forward everything addressed to me to Wuhan — never imagining they'd send the rest along too.
"Other letters?"
"Ones addressed to the author Hopil."
There was really no need to forward Hopil's fan mail too.
"Why are you reading letters addressed to the author Hopil?"
Lim Hayeon squinted one eye and studied me as if something didn't add up. It wasn't a misunderstanding, but misunderstandings could pile up all too easily all the same. I would have to phrase this carefully.
"In case some bastard like Jeon Gilsan slipped a letter in."
"Ah..."
Remembering how Jeon Gilsan had once tried to recruit Hopil, Lim Hayeon let out a small groan.
"And it's not as though only kind letters arrive."
Mostly it was fan mail, but every so often a baptism of hate mail disguised as friendly advice would come through. Something about the battle scenes lacking realism — scenes even the Sichuan Tang Clan had signed off on, no less.
"There are a lot of pink letters in the pile."
Lim Hayeon asked, eyeing the pink envelopes that stood out in unusual numbers among the bundle.
"Those come from one devoted reader. She sends along her own sketches of Dang Jeong, musings on what the Poison Killing Domain might actually look like. And every rereading leaves a different impression, apparently, so she writes pages and pages on each new one."
"She sounds like a remarkably devoted reader."
"It's only that the pink envelopes catch the eye — the other readers write quite often as well. But this sort of thing could wait until I'm back in Yichang. I'll have to tell them to stop forwarding it."
Grateful as I was for the strength reading them gave me, there was the Mangeum Jeonjang, Lim Hayeon, the Joseon Hometown Association... The problems I carried were far too many for the leisure of savoring letters.
"What do you plan to do with the letters addressed to the author Hopil?"
"Send them back to Yichang, and show them to Hopil later."
It wasn't that I disliked reading reader reactions. I simply had no time for it now.
As I busied myself sorting the letters addressed to Kang Yunho from those addressed to Hopil, Lim Hayeon went on watching me in silence.
Did she have something more to say? She hovered hesitantly for a while, but the moment our eyes met, she opened her mouth.
What is it this time?
"...Then can I write a letter too?"
"To the author Hopil?"
So hearing that Hopil reads his letters had made her want to send one.
"B-but you're absolutely not allowed to read it!"
Like a girl forbidding anyone on pain of death from ever opening her diary, Lim Hayeon flushed faintly as she said it.
"Hmm..."
"Swear it!"
"Very well. Manager Kang Yunho hereby swears that only Hopil shall read this letter."
"Deal! I'll write it before the letters go back to Yichang!"
Apparently she had plenty to say to Hopil, because Lim Hayeon kicked the door open and marched out with far more spirit than she'd shown during the Haomen talk.
What will she write, I wonder.
I'll just have to read it and see.
"I said, get the inn owner out here!"
I was reading through the letters flown in from Yichang when a ruckus erupted downstairs.
"What seems to be the problem..."
"A barbarian like you doesn't need to know!"
"Why in the world are there so many barbarians in this place?"
"Oh, come off it! What's a barbarian bastard going to do with that angry face of yours, huh?!"
What on earth is going on now?
I moved to rise at the din, but faster than I could, a black-haired waiter came bursting through the door, his face tight with urgency.
"Association Leader! Some thug who looks like he crawled out of a ditch is asking for you. I think you'd better come see for yourself."
"Let's go."
Rising from my seat with a calm that stood in stark contrast to the waiter's alarm, I...
What is this? Some martial artist come to pick a quarrel?
An inn in the martial world was a place where brawls broke out the moment anyone grew bored. I had enlarged the kitchen, cut down the number of tables, and converted the whole establishment into a delivery-focused operation. Of course, I hadn't abandoned the inn's proper trade of meals and lodging — merely scaled it back. Thinking fewer tables would mean fewer fights might have been a touch too complacent of me.
Staff were allowed to look anxious, but if the owner did too, the whole house would panic. Face cold as ice, soles hot as coals, I hurried down to the first floor.
"I said bring out the innkeeper!"
Martial artists, sure enough. Even from the second-floor landing I could make out sword-bearing warriors below.
"I'm the owner of this inn."
Pushing calmly past my floundering staff, I approached the source of the commotion.
Huh?
What is this guy doing here?
"...And why are you here?"
The star of the commotion was someone I knew — no, a scoundrel of a bastard.
"Jeon Gilsan?"
"Why is the man who used to sell books in Yichang standing here?"
Jeon Gilsan of the Mangeum Bookstore asked me, seated in my office, his face twisted with gritted teeth.
"Are you asking because you don't know? Or asking because you do?" I replied, making no attempt to hide my displeasure. Why do you think I'm here? You took one hit from me, scurried home to whimper about it, and that's the only reason I'm standing here.
"Don't know...? Ah-ha! You! You're the one who said your Daseogak got snatched away by your maternal grandfather!"
"You talk about it as if it happened to someone else."
Someone had their livelihood torn away in a single instant, and to this bastard it was already yesterday's news.
"Heh heh heh. A beast that doesn't know its place must be prepared to die the moment it bites the tiger."
"What? Beast?! All right, that's quite enough out of you!"
Lim Hayeon, who had been listening quietly beside us, shouted.
"Lady Hayeon."
This was about to come to blows.
No — if anything, I hoped she'd give him a very thorough thrashing. But if she laid into this bastard, there was no telling how the Mangeum Lord would react.
What to do. For the sake of form, I settled on merely pretending to stop her, and lightly caught the end of Hayeon's sleeve.
"Let go of me! He should've been down on his knees thanking us for shipping him back to Wuhan in one piece! Let's start by breaking a limb or two, and then hear him out!"
What an utterly charming proposal.
"Do you have any idea who this is! Insolent little wench! Urgh!!!"
These bastards were really about to draw steel first, in another man's place of business?
Lim Hayeon closing the distance to the guard was far quicker than the guard drawing his sword. The Golden Grasping Hand technique, was it? She slammed the man into the wall with her bare hands.
"The insolent ones are you! Who do you think we've been suffering for all this time!"
Perhaps because it had all happened in the blink of an eye, the other two guards just stood there, dumbstruck.
"You bitch!"
A fight? Count me in. I readied myself to spring out at once. But say — if you draw blades here, the Joseon folk are going to come pouring in without end. You sure you can handle that?
Jeon Gilsan watched the scene unfold in silence for a moment, then raised a hand to halt it.
"Now I understand the situation! Kang Yunho, you bastard! You lost Daseogak, came to Wuhan, and set yourself up in business with whatever money you had left, didn't you!"
Even amid the chaos, the scoundrel seemed entirely at his ease, grinning as he spoke.
"Then get to the point quickly, or leave before your limbs end up broken."
I had no intention of answering.
"Well, well. That does make the talking easier."
Had this guy swallowed his introduction and his thesis whole, and finished the negotiation in there too? Why was he grinning at a conclusion only he had reached?
"Hm. Breaking your limbs still looks easier than that."
I set the Soyun Mind Image Art to work. I couldn't radiate the presence of a true master, but smothering the air with menace came easily enough.
"Tch. Then let me make you an offer — one that benefits us both!"
Jeon Gilsan clicked his tongue, then shouted at me with just a hint of having been cowed.
"An offer? What kind of offer?"
He seemed to have come without even knowing I owned this inn. What offer on earth could have brought him here? Why had he run roughshod over the place out of nowhere?
I resolved that if he spouted any nonsense, I'd administer separate beatings — one on behalf of Kang Yunho who lost Daseogak, and one on behalf of Hopil — and waited for his offer.
"I'll be blunt. The business you're running here. Hand it over to me."