The Gathering - 2
"The money they've entrusted comes to less than I expected."
Just as Chef An had said, a few had deposited sums that could truly be called a nest egg, but most of it was pin money saved bit by bit.
"You know the straits the Joseon folk in Wuhan are in. This is coin set aside for a physician when illness strikes, for a mother's sixtieth birthday feast, for laying the ancestral table on the holidays."
No matter how tightly a man pinched his pennies, life had a way of arriving at moments when money simply had to be spent. What I was looking at were the lifelines of the Joseon people of Wuhan.
"Do you have every personal detail in this ledger memorized?"
"Roughly, aye? And anything I can't recall, I ask around—someone always knows."
"Then it might just be worth a try..."
Worth putting my plan into motion.
"Surely you're not thinking of putting that money to work! Do it without permission and the backlash will be no joke. It may look like small change to you, but it could come to knives!"
Chef An cried, startled half out of his wits.
"I'm a man who once stretched a single slice of bread across a whole week. You think I don't know that?"
Fingering every hard-won coin, I used to agonize—starve today and eat tomorrow, or starve tomorrow and eat today?
"Then what is this about, exactly?"
"There's something I want to attempt for the future of the Hometown Association. Might I borrow the ledger for a little while?"
"Suit yourself. Orders are piling up, so back to the kitchen I go."
Taking the ledger in hand, I made my way back to the office.
"Don't tell me you're planning to invest the money written in that ledger."
Lim Hayeon asked, dubiously, as I stared hard at the ledger.
"The trial's terms are to run everything on promissory notes and what the business itself earns. I'm well aware I'm not to take investment either."
Without those constraints, the scoundrels sitting for the succession trial would have bled their parents' purses dry—and I'd have been dipping into Daseogak's earnings myself.
"Sky-fallen money may buy you something tasty, but it can't be sunk into the business you're running now. So what exactly are you plotting?"
Lim Hayeon's concern was fair.
"Expanding a business doesn't have to mean begging for investors."
If the method I'd devised worked, the capital crunch would be solved.
"You're not thinking of playing moneylender, are you?"
Usury against our own Joseon people, no less. The moment I did that, they'd be calling me a loan shark instead of Association Leader.
"Haha. Perish the thought. By the by, Chef An's ledger is far too slapdash. I can't decide whether my plan is worth running until the books are in order—might you help me whip them into shape?"
I held the ledger out to Lim Hayeon with a sly little grin.
"Do you realize you've been quietly dumping every stray chore on me lately?"
Lim Hayeon pouted, plainly a little put out. It stung all the more for being true.
"Then, since it might all come to nothing, this once I'll do it myse—huh?!"
Lim Hayeon plucked the ledger from my hand with effortless grace, then flashed a smile so lovely it left me gaping like a fish.
"Hand it over. If it's something you need, then it's something I'll do."
"Well, well... If what you say holds, this could actually work."
I took the ledger Lim Hayeon had whipped into shape, paged through it, and laid my plan out for her.
"That's just what I think, too."
There, in the neatly ordered ledger, was a list of names perfect for testing my scheme.
"But won't the Mangeum Lord pick a fight over it?"
This was the old skinflint who'd nitpicked even the Giosugu budget. Like a sergeant with a canceled leave pass, there was no telling where the man might throw his tantrum.
But this was different.
"Pick a fight? He won't be able to. We'll be using a method the Mangeum Lord himself sanctioned."
My plan was one that would compel even the great Mangeum Lord to nod along.
"Coming from you, I suppose that's true, but..."
Lim Hayeon watched me with an uneasy face.
"Hahaha. It's fine. The business is thriving already, and even if he took issue with this, the most I'd hear out of him is 'forget the matchmaking—just marry the girl.'"
There was no fault to find, so I tossed the joke off with an easy laugh.
"Wh-what did you just say?"
Why glare at me like that?
"Ahem... If it'll truly set your mind at ease, I'll send a letter ahead to the Mangeum Lord."
I cleared my throat awkwardly and lifted my brush.
"You'll have it checked by me before it goes out. Absolutely. Absolutely."
Yes, yes.
With Lim Hayeon perched at my elbow, eyes blazing as she marked up every line, I drafted a meticulous business proposal and dispatched it to Mangeum Hall—one written to make sure I would never become the Mangeum Lord's grandson-in-law.
The Mangeum Lord's estate.
"You still haven't found the culprit?"
Hands clasped behind his back, the Mangeum Lord gazed out at the pond where fish sported in his garden, and put the question to his Chief Steward.
"We have mobilized the officials and murim fighters alike to flush out the beast, but we remain in the dark."
A week had already passed since Heo Song was found dead. Mangeum Hall was straining on every front to hunt down the murderer, yet had turned up not so much as a trace.
"And the grandsons?"
"The constables threw themselves into the investigation, but they report no grounds for suspicion could be found."
"And your own read on it, Steward?"
"The grandsons..."
Heo Song's body had been discovered in the pleasure quarter. However heavy the foot traffic there, not one soul had witnessed the killing, nor seen the body carried to where it lay.
It was one more reason for the scales to tip further and further away from a crime of passion, toward a meticulously planned murder.
If it was planned, then who had killed Heo Song?
Who in Wuhan, even now, possessed a motive to murder the old man's grandson—a motive worth braving the Mangeum Lord's wrath?
Faced with the grim arithmetic, the Chief Steward swallowed his words before his lord.
"...I did not spend a lifetime raising this fortress of Myriad Gold to watch my own blood carve one another up with blades."
He had gathered wealth enough that dividing it among his children would have cost him nothing. Who, then, dared to stage such a fratricidal bloodbath?
So this was what had come of losing his one and only son? The Mangeum Lord felt as though he'd aged years in the space of a heartbeat.
"Surely they would never commit such a deed."
"I want to believe in those children too, but..."
Distrust soaked every syllable of the Mangeum Lord's voice.
"Then might you halt the trial altogether, and speak with Young Master Kang directly regarding the succession?"
The Chief Steward knew better than anyone which way the scales inside the Mangeum Lord's heart were already tipping.
Better to erase the trial and secure the succession outright. And if a trial his lord simply must have, why, whittle the field down to a handful of outstanding grandsons and set them competing anew.
"If any soul beyond you and me learns of this, can you swear the same thing will not happen again?"
Heo Song's death might be the first—but it would hardly be the last. The Mangeum Lord looked down at the Chief Steward with eyes cold as frost.
"I spoke too hastily. Forgive me."
The Chief Steward bowed his head in apology.
"In the world beyond, I'm prepared to beg that Baekga fellow's pardon as long as he pleases. Let him demand his blows, and I'll stand and take every one. But I've no wish to count him my enemy. Find the culprit, and quickly. That is what comes first."
"At once, my lord. I will give it my utmost. Also—a letter has arrived from Young Master Kang."
"Bring it here."
The Mangeum Lord drew out the letter from Kang Yunho and read.
"Heh heh heh. So this boy Kang Yunho has a flair for money as well! Steward, come look at this."
He handed it over as proudly as a man showing off the roll of civil-examination passers with his own son-in-law's name upon it.
"What—?!"
Reading Kang Yunho's letter, the Chief Steward's eyes went round as saucers.
"He has passed the trial; he could rest content with his lot and take a breath. And yet he moves without pause, as if he does not know the meaning of fatigue."
In truth, Kang Yunho had merely not rested, on the Simun Branch Master's advice—but there was no way the Mangeum Lord could know that.
"The longer I look, the more he reminds me of you in your younger days, my lord."
"Heh heh heh. I clapped a restriction on his money, and the rascal contrives a game this amusing."
"He walks his tightrope along the very line Your Lordship drew. What message shall I carry back?"
"The boy passed the first trial, so a reward is owed. Tell him it is approved."
The Mangeum Lord nodded, the very picture of satisfaction.
"I shall dispatch a man without delay."
Watching the Chief Steward bow once more and withdraw, the Mangeum Lord turned back to the pond in his garden.
Something predatory lurked in that pond which even he knew nothing of.
It was still too soon to loose the golden carp he had gone to such pains to fetch from afar into the pond of his so lovingly tended garden.
"The grandsons squall for one more promissory note, and this boy goes and builds something worth more than a promissory note."
Days without respite—worry and woe crashing in wave upon wave.
The Mangeum Lord smiled faintly, imagining whether the golden carp might yet prove, just as he hoped, a man who would one day become a dragon.
"Just as I thought—the Mangeum Lord approved it too."
"Haaah. What a relief, truly."
When I read the letter from Mangeum Hall aloud, Lim Hayeon heaved a sigh so vast it seemed her chest could swell no further.
No matter how I looked at it, she had to rank among the top three women I'd met in my life.
"Now then—time to prepare for our guests."
The groundwork was laid. All that remained was to set the plan in motion.
"Everyone's here, I see. I'd braced myself for at least one or two absentees."
The inn under my operation. I had invited those among the ledger's names whose savings amounted to a genuine nest egg.
"Who in his right mind refuses a gathering you've personally called?"
"Quite right, Association Leader!"
"Eat your fill while the food's still hot."
"We will, thank you!"
Fill a man's belly and his heart grows generous—that is simply the way of people. Once I'd confirmed the plates were cleared, I stepped up onto the platform I'd had set ready.
"I imagine more than a few of you are wondering why I've gathered you here today."
From the very first word I bolstered my voice with the Soyun Mind Image Art, seizing every ear in the room at once.
At the sound of my voice, everyone in the inn fixed their eyes on me.
"We all know we're among the better-off members of the Hometown Association!"
One sharp-witted Joseon man called back with a hearty laugh.
I nodded, granting his point, then swept my gaze around the room once more and opened my mouth with due gravity.
"You've all at least heard tell of the business I run."
"You mean the food delivery? I've used it myself a few times."
"Convenient as anything, that!"
"I've gathered you here to offer you the chance to take part in that business."
There it was—straight to the point.
"..."
Bewildered looks all around, and a beat of silence drifted over the inn.
"Could the reason you've gathered us be, by chance, to win our permission to use the money in Chef An's ledger?"
The sharp-witted man raised his hand a second time and put the question to me.
"It is not. I did not call you here to ask the association's members for permission."
I had no intention of asking anyone's permission. If anything, from here on out, you lot would be the ones coming to me.
"Or is it investment you're after? The kind where shares get handed round?"
"I didn't gather you to line my own belly. Quite the opposite—I gathered you to fill the bellies of every Joseon man and woman sitting in this room."
"Honestly, I can't make head nor tail of it."
"Then let me put it plainly: I invited you here to give you the chance to open branches of my business of your own."
Join my franchise. That was why I'd gathered them.
"You mean for the likes of us to run the food delivery ourselves? With all respect, not one soul in this room could afford to buy so much as a building like this inn."
"That's right!"
"We know your business thrives, Association Leader—but for folk like us, applying for the work you hand out is as high as we can reach!"
Fair words, every one.
The people I'd gathered did have savings to their names. But those savings were, at best, coin for a rainy day—not nearly enough to make any of them owners of Wuhan's ruinously priced buildings.
Has the Association Leader lost his mind? What nonsense is this? Their thoughts were written plain as day on the Joseon faces around me.
It didn't matter. The pushback only proved that every mind in the room was riveted on the question I'd thrown down.
Now was the moment to dangle the bait they would find hardest to resist.
"And what if I told you that everyone sitting in this room could own a building of his own?"
"..."
This time the silence was not bewilderment. It was astonishment.
"H-how could that possibly be?"
"With my help, it's possible."
I loaded conviction into my face and my voice—spoke as though all they need do was take my hand to wake up tomorrow as landlords.
"What help? Don't tell me you mean to buy the buildings for us?"
"I have no such intention."
If I had money like that, would I have gathered you lot? I shook my head, firm and final.
"Then—"
"Then how in the world are we to take part in your business?"
The crowd's questions multiplied.
And now the moment had come to deal out the first answer of the day.
"There's one tradition we Joseon people keep that the people of the Central Plains never had. Isn't that so?"
"A tradition?"
"What on earth could it be?"
Something to fatten my own purse. Something to raise up the Joseon Hometown Association of Wuhan. A method that fit even the Mangeum Lord's terms. And a way to expand my business, all over again.
"The gye."
"The... what?"
"A gye—a savings circle, where members pool their coin round by round. I, Kang Yunho, your Association Leader, will stand as head of the gye to found your branches."