The Proposal (4)
"You've been staying up far too late lately, haven't you?"
It was the night of the day on which Jeon Gilsan — Franchise Owner No. 1 — had successfully gotten his inn onto its own footing as well. Im Hayeon pushed open the office door, worry written all over her face.
"I'm meeting the Mangeum Lord tomorrow. Until then, I have to keep at it."
Head office work, merchant dealings, franchise management, my duties as head of the Joseon Hometown Association — there was even Daseogak business flown in from Yichang that needed seeing to. I was swamped, truly swamped.
"Here, these are the ledgers you'll be taking tomorrow. I've more or less finished sorting through the miscellaneous documents, too."
If Im Hayeon hadn't been helping me, I would have collapsed on the spot.
"You've had your hands full training the carrier pigeons as well. Thank you. Huh?!"
The moment I rose from my chair and reached for the ledger she held out, my balance gave way beneath me.
"Are you all right?!"
Im Hayeon caught me in her arms before I could hit the floor. Had I really been that close to keeling over?
Perhaps startled by the situation, she kept her arms locked firmly around me and did not let go. Did she wear some kind of perfume? A strangely pleasant scent drifted up from her soft frame.
Get a grip. My exhausted mind is wandering into useless territory.
"Forgive me. I must have felt dizzy for a moment."
I planted my feet, steadied myself upright, and deliberately — calmly — peeled myself away from her. Or perhaps it was only the lamplight playing tricks. Im Hayeon's face looked faintly flushed.
"Get some sleep for tonight."
Im Hayeon spoke with worry practically dripping from her face, the way one might watch a newborn taking its first wobbly steps.
"I still have to go over the sorted ledgers..."
"Sleep. There's nothing that needs checking."
She planted both hands against my side as though she would put her martial skills to good use the moment I opened my mouth again, and glared at me.
"All right."
If I didn't want to collapse in front of the Mangeum Lord tomorrow, sleep was the only option.
I nodded and sat down on the bed tucked into the corner of the office.
"Um..."
As I readied myself to lie down, Im Hayeon called to me with her head bowed.
"Did you have something to say?"
"...Thank you. Tomorrow's going to go well!"
Had that embarrassed her? Without waiting so much as for my reply, Im Hayeon bolted straight out of the office.
Did she think I was running myself into the ground because of her? Which, to be fair, wasn't entirely wrong. Back when we'd first met, she could hardly bring herself to say thank you — this was truly remarkable progress.
I collapsed onto the bed.
To save Daseogak and Im Hayeon, tomorrow's meeting with the Mangeum Lord had to end well. For now: sleep, wake, and face the old man with a clear head.
"The Mangeum Lord is currently in a meeting with his maternal grandsons. Please wait a little while."
So that was why that rascal Jeon Gilsan had said he'd be hard to catch today. He'd had a prior engagement with his grandfather, had he?
I'd come fully braced to meet the man straight away, so the wait left me strangely deflated.
The contest among the Mangeum Lord's grandsons was the true examination; mine was merely a side test administered in passing. Waiting was all there was to do.
"Sh-she's gone! Where did she go!"
"Find her, quickly!"
I was waiting with the air of a man awaiting a job interview when the surroundings suddenly erupted into commotion.
What now? Hoping to settle my nerves with a little distraction, I stepped out into the garden, where I'd been told I was free to roam.
"...What's a box doing here?"
A single wooden crate — big enough for a person to hide inside — sat in one corner of the garden.
It hadn't been there a moment ago?
A wooden box, in a garden scrubbed of every artificial thing. Out of place didn't begin to cover it.
"Search everywhere, quickly!"
"Young Master Kang — pardon us a moment."
What looked like the mansion's servants filed into the garden and began glancing about.
What is this? There's a blatantly suspicious crate sitting right there — why does nobody spare it a glance?
"Not here. She must be somewhere else!"
The servants peered around as though the box simply did not exist — sweeping every corner of the garden except the one it occupied — then promptly filed back out.
What is this? Are they all in on the act? They're like the guards standing watch over the demon's ultimate weapon, utterly blind to the box crawling right past their boots.
Looking closer, the air around the crate seemed faintly hazy. Clever. I crept cautiously toward it.
"Oh no!"
I had snapped some strange wooden splinter lying beside the box.
Everything in this garden was bound to be expensive. What if they demanded compensation?
"Huh?!"
The instant the splinter cracked, a startled yelp escaped from inside the box.
"Search the garden one more time!"
The box is moving. Whoever you are, if this were a stealth game it would be an instant game over. Execution guaranteed.
"Ah, that is..."
"Who might you be?"
I shifted to block the box's path.
"P-please step aside."
A woman? From inside the box came what was unmistakably a very timid woman's voice.
"......"
Should I step aside?
"Couldn't you pleeeease move asiiiide?"
A desperate plea rang out from within the box.
"Young Miss! Young Miss! Where have you gone! Young Miss!"
"Try looking somewhere like a jar or a crate!"
"Eep!"
The Mangeum Lord's family, then. Apparently some troublemaking young lady was playing hide-and-seek.
"No one's on the right, it seems."
With an all-important interview looming, I had zero desire to get tangled up in somebody else's mess. I murmured quietly, just loudly enough for the box to hear, that it ought to lift itself up a little.
"Th-thank youuuu."
The wooden crate rose just high enough for a pair of feet to scurry beneath it, then bustled off in quick little steps toward my right.
"I meant the box's right, not mine."
"Ah!"
The crate wheeled about and promptly vanished toward the empty end of the garden.
That voice had sounded young. I wondered who she was.
"Food delivery by carrier pigeon, is it. Now that's a clever notion."
Not long after the suspicious box had vanished, the Chief Steward I'd met before came to fetch me and led me before the Mangeum Lord.
"I judged that pioneering a new market would serve better than fighting over businesses that already exist. It's a venture I arrived at by asking myself two questions: what could I do, and what does Wuhan lack."
"And this 'franchise' scheme of yours is a curious thing in itself. Expanding a business without borrowing a coin, without spending another coin of your own."
"No one else can hope to imitate the Giosugu, and there remains no shortage of corners of Wuhan left to expand into — so I believe it a sound strategy."
"Granting a tenancy even to another man's grandson, no less."
He knew even that much?
"Haha... Well, he's been delighted lately. Says the profits have been generous."
I said I was squeezing him for all he was worth through the franchise, but if Gilsan didn't clear enough profit to absorb the squeeze, that was a problem for me too.
"The substance of the business is sound. ...Come to think of it — are your parents still in your homeland?"
Why bring up my parents all of a sudden?
"They have passed away."
I delivered the fact as flatly as I could, stripped of all feeling.
"A pity. They ought to have lived to see their son grown into his own."
That is not the face of a grieving man. If anything, there was something subtle in his voice — gladness, almost. Why did he ask at all?
"I live so as to be a son who brings no shame to the names of my departed parents."
I couldn't fathom his reason for asking, but I played the filial son, living with his departed parents held close in his heart.
The Mangeum Lord gave a nod, then paged through my business documents and ledgers in silence for a long while.
Was something wrong? His brow had knotted itself and showed no intention of unknotting. Why turn like this, when everything had been going so warmly?
This was unsettling. It felt like fielding every interview question perfectly, only to be called out on the empty stretch of my résumé — those years spent jobless.
"This business of yours has a problem."
The Mangeum Lord drove the wedge straight into my anxiety.
"What problem do you mean?"
"The ledger entries concerning the pigeons are flimsy. By rights you ought to have purchased them at a steep price, yet I find no record of any such purchase."
"As it happens, I have a friend capable of training carrier pigeons, and I received her assistance."
"I asked to see your ability — not your friend's. A small favor might be forgiven. But the foundation of a business must never rest upon another's help."
"Whatever help the pigeons took, the conception of the business was entirely my own."
"Then you ought to have paid fair compensation for that help. Had you done so, it would count as your ability. But the ledger records no such payment. And had you paid it, you would never have been able to open the business at all."
"...Are you saying my examination is void?"
Carrier pigeons were ruinously expensive. Within the original budget, buying the three-story inn and then purchasing the birds on top was never going to fit. So he was ruling that a venture already running successfully was invalid.
"What? Does it strike you as sophistry?"
Of course it's sophistry. What else would you call it?
You never set any such condition to begin with. The terms were one promissory note and a business in Wuhan. Mobilizing Im Hayeon was part of my ability too.
At this rate, I would fail the examination and become a slave to that debt forever.
I stared steadily at the Mangeum Lord.
A smile, and beneath it the face of a man waiting for something. He had raised an absurd pretext, driven me into a corner, and was now waiting to see how I'd squirm.
This old man plays the same game I do.
He's waiting for me to take the bait.
"You praised me from beginning to end, and only now raise this objection. I take it there is a particular meaning behind it."
So tell me why you cast your fishing line, old man.
"Heh heh. Aye. Your own piece of sophistry — calling the pigeons mere 'help.' Accept my sophistry, and I'll be lenient with yours."
"And what sophistry would that be, sir?"
Was he about to bolt an additional condition onto the examination?
"Take one matchmaking meeting with my granddaughter. A single look."
"Sir. Hwarin and I have already promised each other our future."
The proposal came from so far beyond anything I had imagined that I was struck speechless for a good while.
"You mean ten years from now."
Where in the world did he dig that up from?
"Ten years, twenty — nothing changes."
"How can a man bent on great deeds go unwed? A man must find someone to stand beside him. I shall introduce you to my granddaughter, so go and meet her."
Strictly speaking, I got married two years ago. Technically a married man, thank you very much.
"I am grateful you hold me in such high regard. But — forgive my impertinence — I believe this proposal would have you breaking faith with the Lord of the Baek Family Manor."
I couldn't very well tell him the truth, so turning him away was the only play.
"Marry ten years hence if that is what you want — marry whenever you please. I am not telling you to break the engagement. Quite the opposite: I mean to give you my granddaughter precisely so that you may carry the Baek family's will forward."
The Mangeum Lord squared his shoulders and beamed at me like a man bestowing a magnificent act of grace.
So this was how minds worked in this world. It was absurd — and yet it might well be genuine goodwill.
Even back in Korea, though you hardly saw it these days, old gentlemen would occasionally take a shining to a decent young man and suggest he meet their granddaughter.
"I understand your intention, sir. But how could I ever betray the trust of the woman to whom I have promised a future?"
I had resolved to take responsibility for every heroine whose path crossed mine — but that had never amounted to a declaration that I would accept every woman who came my way.
I refused, in a voice that brooked no argument.
"Then I cannot accept your sophistry either."
Unbelievable old codger.
The Mangeum Lord smiled at me the way a fisherman smiles at a catch already on the hook — as if to say, don't even dream of wriggling free.
Marry my granddaughter if you want Daseogak back. What kind of outrageous proposal is this?
Had it been offered to anyone but me, I might even have understood. I was, arguably, a desirable catch. But why would a man who treasured his friendship with the Lord of the Baek Family Manor float something like this?
In that instant, a single hypothesis surfaced in my mind.
"Sir. Might this whole affair be connected to the matter of your grandsons unfolding here in Wuhan at this very moment?"
No way. Could it be. Absurd. No — the examination concerns only the grandsons among his maternal grandchildren. ...And yet something still doesn't add up.
"For an outsider to pry into a family's private affairs is poor manners. But should you come to form ties with my family, I might be persuaded to tell you."
Half a confirmation, then.
"I appreciate your high opinion of me. But Hwarin is granddaughter to the Lord of the Baek Family Manor — and a daughter of the Sichuan Tang Clan."
No matter how terrifying the Mangeum Hall's coffers, his opposite number is the ruling house of Sichuan — the Sichuan Tang Clan. Do everyone a favor and give up, old man.
"No matter. My granddaughter is a child of the Zhuge Clan."
"...I beg your pardon?"
I'm sorry — where? The Zhuge Clan? The Zhuge Clan, as in the Zhuge of Divine Strategy?
One of the clans that never fails to be named whenever wuxia boils the great martial families down to the Five Great Clans. If Sichuan had the Sichuan Tang Clan, then Hubei had the Zhuge Clan.
To be sure, Hubei's foremost sect was the Wudang Sect — crown of the Taoist sects and one of the pillars of the Nine Great Sects and One Alliance.
But that said more about Wudang being a sect mighty enough to be hailed as the Mount Tai and North Star of the martial world than about any weakness in the Zhuge Clan's standing within Hubei.
"The child's mother has given her consent as well. I've already told her to have the girl made presentable. Meet her first — then we shall talk."
He'd finished the arrangements long ago, hadn't he.
It was so absurd I nearly barked out a laugh. The pigeons had been nothing but a pretext — the old man, it seemed, had meant to put me in front of his granddaughter on any excuse he could invent.
How was I supposed to play this?
Should I tell him that Tang Hwa-rin was treated as direct bloodline of the Sichuan Tang Clan? That if I sent a letter confessing to matchmaking meetings mere months after parting from Hwarin, an enraged Poison Human would plow the Mangeum Hall into a wasteland?
Or that Salmak's brightest rising star would never stand to see such a thing? Or else...
"L-Lord! The Young Miss—!"
While I was still picking my words, the Chief Steward flung the door open, urgency written across his face.
"What is it?"
"Th-the Young Miss, she—!"
"What about the girl?"
"She's vanished — leaving only a wooden doll behind!"