The Gathering - 4
"Ahem."
"If you're tired, let's call it a day."
The sun had already set, and the moon was peeking its head out over the rooftops. As one of my eyelids surrendered to the pull of gravity, Lim Hayeon spoke up with a note of concern in her voice.
"No. I can keep going a while longer."
I splashed my face with cold water, driving off the sleep demon clinging to my eyelids.
The preparations for the mutual savings circle had buried me in work. The papers piling up in my office now included documents not just from the inn's main branch, the Yichang Daseogak, and Jeon Gilsan's franchise, but from the branch savings circles as well.
If I didn't want to face an even taller stack tomorrow, I needed to collect myself and get through this.
"...About what you said at the Joseon mutual savings circle."
When my eyelids started drooping again, Lim Hayeon brought it up in an offhand sort of way.
"Hm?"
"What you said in front of everyone — did you honestly mean it?"
What was she really asking? It sounded like a passing remark, but there was something on her face that suggested it was weighing on her.
"I wouldn't call it honesty so much as choosing which truths to show. Sure, I stand to gain from it, but the association members benefit too. That's just how it is."
She was already a business partner I couldn't cut loose even if I wanted to. We'd drawn up the savings circle plans together from the start, after all. Better to speak plainly than dress it up in pretty intentions like I used to.
I shrugged as if it were nothing.
"It's about wanting our kids to grow up in Wuhan without being looked down on, that's all."
Lim Hayeon nodded at my answer, then pressed on with her questions.
"No matter how well I do, the discrimination that comes with being Joseon will follow me. But if we all prosper together, maybe the next generation will have it a little easier. That's what I was thinking."
You can't erase prejudice and bias. But you can nudge perception — make people think twice before treating us like dirt-poor barbarian scum, because these are rich men now, and messing with rich men invites disaster.
Of course, even if everything went perfectly for me, that kind of change wouldn't come in my generation. Realistically, it was a job for my children's children.
"Hmm..."
Whether or not she liked my answer, Lim Hayeon looked at me, a faint curve softening the corners of her eyes.
"So why did you ask?"
"To keep you awake, obviously."
She had a point. Nothing beats small talk when you're fighting off sleep.
"Ha ha. I must look more exhausted than I thought."
"The sun's down, and you've had a rough stretch lately. Let's just turn in early tonight."
"I'm fine—"
"I'm not fine with it. Go to sleep already."
Her voice dripped with consideration as she rose from her seat, opened my drawer, and filed away the documents and ledgers she'd finished handling.
When had she gotten that far ahead of me?
"Then, until tomorrow."
I decided to get a bit of shut-eye early for once. After seeing Lim Hayeon out, I flopped face-down onto the bed.
Though Kang Yunho's workday had ended, Lim Hayeon's was far from over.
As the manager he trusted, she set about handling what he hadn't managed to finish today.
"Anything unusual? The vegetables that came in today seem to be a few bundles short. I smoothed it over, but if tomorrow's shipment is the same, I'll have to go have words with the supplier."
Kang Yunho was a man who carried responsibility. Daseogak, the inn business, the savings circles, the Joseon Hometown Association, the Mangeum Hall trials, the Simun trials — with every new burden that settled onto his shoulders, the workload of Lim Hayeon, quietly supporting him from behind the scenes, only grew.
"I'll mention it to the boss."
Supplier visit, tomorrow morning. Lim Hayeon carefully noted it in fine script on Kang Yunho's schedule so she wouldn't forget.
"Right. Go to the supplier, grab those bastards by the collar, and come back holding their hand."
"That's right, Sister-in-law! Cling onto the Association Head's hand like thiiiis, and he'll be putty in yours."
One of the black-haired deliverymen demonstrated how to smoothly slip a hand between her breasts, and the other waiters burst out laughing.
"How many times have I told you not to call me that! What happened to your leg?"
Lim Hayeon raised her voice to scold him, then caught sight of the waiter limping and her expression turned to worry.
"Blisters burst. It'll heal soon."
"I'll buy some ointment that's good for blisters."
Supplier visit, then the medicine shop. The morning column of Kang Yunho's schedule, written out in Lim Hayeon's fine hand, was already packed full.
"There's truly no one like our Sister-in-law!"
"The ever-capable lady of the Joseon Hometown Association! Which one of you was it that said the Association Head should marry a Joseon woman?"
"Not me."
"Not me either."
"Haaaah."
Lim Hayeon's fine brows knitted together along with a long sigh.
The more they denied it, the more they teased her. Every time she responded, she only felt like more of a fool.
"Heh heh. Our Association Kang's wife is doing a fine job supporting him, but a woman's true wifely duty — take my missus here — is popping out heirs, thick and fast, to carry on the line—"
"Aaaaah, not listening! La la la. I'm off to check the branch."
Lim Hayeon clapped her hands over her ears in exaggerated refusal and headed straight up to the third floor.
"Safe travels!"
"Off you go, Sister-in-law!"
The delivery restaurants enjoying wild popularity in Wuhan were, as a rule, three-story buildings.
Homing pigeons were creatures of instinct, returning to their roosts — so the third floors had been renovated with wide-open windows, letting the birds come and go freely while keeping them separated from human space.
At the pigeons' third-floor window, a pink thief cat poked her head outside.
"Coo-coo-coot!"
"That's right. Off you go to see your friends."
With the carrier pigeon Gugu at her side, Lim Hayeon flitted across the rooftops of Wuhan and, in the blink of an eye, arrived at the pigeon roost of Jeon Gilsan's franchise.
"Huh? Who— oh! Sister-in-law! Welcome!"
A black-haired waiter started in surprise for a moment before greeting her with clear delight.
Lim Hayeon sighed inwardly and quickly began checking over the pigeons.
"No sick birds at the branch, and no losses this week."
The Giosugu were the heart of Kang Yunho's business. The basic care methods had been taught to the trustworthy association members working at the inn, but the one who bore final responsibility was, as ever, Lim Hayeon.
"Yes, ma'am. The boss here isn't your ordinary man, after all. Losing a single bird costs a fortune, so if anyone mistreats the pigeons, he'll wring their necks clean."
Compensation clause for lost Giosugu.
Lim Hayeon remembered what Kang Yunho used to say — the tighter he drew up the contract clauses, the more that mangy mutt would behave like his own pedigreed dog — and smiled quietly to herself.
"Glad to hear it."
"Can I get you some tea while you're here?"
"No need. I'm only passing through. See to your work."
"Understood, ma'am."
After sending the waiter off, Lim Hayeon checked the pigeons' condition one more time.
"If we keep opening branches, managing the pigeons will become a real problem. They need to keep up with their training."
The more branches they added, the more Lim Hayeon worried about the Giosugu population and keeping them all properly trained.
"Coo! Coo-coo-coot! Coo-coo-coo-coot! Coot-coot!"
"Gugu. Why are you bullying the others?"
When Lim Hayeon turned around, she discovered that Gugu had, at some point, begun putting the other Giosugu through collective disciplinary drills.
Roll left. Roll right. It was the drill-command style he'd learned from Kang Yunho — and here he was, putting it to use on the other pigeons.
Lim Hayeon couldn't hide her bewilderment at the audacity of a bird born to spirit-beast rank, a rarity that came along perhaps once in a generation.
"Gugu......"
At her scolding, Gugu bowed his head with mechanical precision, at a perfect right angle.
"There's no need to bow your head like that."
"Coo-coo-coo-coot!"
Mistress, I have administered a proper dressing-down so the youngsters will take their training seriously. Gugu made his desperate case, but Lim Hayeon couldn't understand a word of it. She simply assumed the defiant bird had his reasons.
"Come on, Gugu. Let's go."
Need for staff who can help without the pigeon-rearing secrets leaking out. After jotting down one more thing to discuss with Kang Yunho, Lim Hayeon turned toward the window.
Gugu did not turn.
"Coo! Coo-coot!"
Gugu hopped up onto a female Giosugu that had caught his fancy.
Mistress, I shall keep hatching splendid chicks to be of service to you! Gugu declared with heroic resolve.
"Haah... Honestly. I'll come pick you up tomorrow."
The words never reached him.
With a look of pure exasperation, Lim Hayeon let out a small sigh and slipped out the window alone.
"A remarkable man."
Where Lim Hayeon returned to was not her own room, but Kang Yunho's.
Just when she thought she'd finally figured him out, he'd pull something entirely new out of his sleeve. So why was she here, in his room? She couldn't have answered that herself.
All she did was settle onto the edge of his desk and stare blankly at his sleeping face.
A face steeped in fatigue, dead to the world, lost in deep slumber. Looking at it, Lim Hayeon felt something in the corner of her chest sting and yet quietly fill up at the same time.
Because the reason he was so exhausted... was her.
"Mmh... mmm..."
Lim Hayeon flinched at his sleep-mumbling, then soon let a soft smile spread across her face.
Somehow it was already the middle of the night. She was tired too, but she could bear it. When he was working himself to the bone for her sake like this, how could she possibly complain of being tired?
Lim Hayeon turned and quietly made her way back to her own room.
"Will it really be all right...?"
Back in her room, Lim Hayeon murmured the meaningless question she'd never managed to ask him, her voice unsteady with unease.
The matchmaking meeting with the Zhuge Clan. In the end, he'd decided to keep seeing her. It really was because of me, because of Daseogak, that he was continuing the courtship... wasn't it?
Lim Hayeon's anxiety, which could never reach Kang Yunho, drifted in circles around the room.
It would be so much easier if he'd just come out and say it, plainly, once.
Then she wouldn't have to feel like this at all.
"Because I'm a runaway courtesan, that's why."
Lim Hayeon pulled the blanket over herself and whispered quietly into the dark.
Being a runaway courtesan was one thing. It only meant she couldn't shed her registry status — it wasn't the end of her life. But a courtesan who had fled and entangled herself with a man? That was a different story entirely.
If the pursuit squad caught her, the future reserved for a courtesan who had crossed that line with a man was so dreadful that even Lim Hayeon shrank from imagining it.
Because she was a runaway courtesan. Because she couldn't afford misunderstandings if she was ever dragged back into the gyobang.
"That must be why he won't say he loves me."
He expressed his affection with his whole being, yet never once spoke the word love — that had to be the reason.
He liked her enough that he'd have to save her from being a runaway courtesan one way or another. That was why.
Beneath the blanket, Lim Hayeon's lips curved into a pleased little smile.
"There's no way things will work out with a Zhuge Clan woman."
Thank goodness she'd pressed her face-stamp into that letter and sent it off before his matchmaking meeting. Surely the memory of her face had flashed before his eyes, making every woman there look washed-out by comparison.
Just as he'd said — it was never going to happen in the first place, was it?
Because he liked her. And then there was the matter of the peerless Zhuge Clan itself.
As if the stiff-necked daughter of a great martial clan would ever spare a glance for a black-haired outsider. Not that he was lacking in anything, of course.
"Between a black-haired man and the Zhuge Clan, of course a beautiful courtesan would— no, wait, that's not what I meant!"
Lim Hayeon's eyes went wide, and she clapped a hand over her own mouth in horror at what she'd just said.
She calmed her racing heart, then found herself recalling what Kang Yunho had once said.
"Someday, I'll have children of my own too. And I want them to live in Wuhan without ever being looked down upon."
A different man from that one.
Unlike the man who'd abandoned his own family and run without a backward glance, this man would surely do his utmost for his children.
Whoever married him would surely be happy.
"Why am I even thinking this..."
Lim Hayeon buried her burning face in her pillow. But no matter how hard she pressed it into the fabric, certain thoughts refused to fade.
What if.
What if, just maybe.
If he bought out her fate.
If he purchased for her a miracle she'd believed could never be changed.
Then, truly...
"...I don't know."
Lim Hayeon closed her eyes, face hidden beneath the blanket.
Blanket or no, anyone who saw her face in the dead of night would have found it flushed bright red.
"Haah."
It was the same daily routine as always — what was there to sigh about? She'd had far too many stray thoughts in the night. They'd disappear once work started.
Lim Hayeon let out a small sigh and knocked on the door of Kang Yunho's office.
"Huh?"
When the door opened, Kang Yunho was standing there, already dressed and ready to go out.
"Where are you off to?"
"There's someone I need to meet."
"I'll come with you."
They had to stop by the supplier on the way. And the medicine shop. Lim Hayeon held up his schedule as she spoke.
"My apologies, but next time. This is a visit to Mangeum Hall, so I'll go alone."
"Why Mangeum Hall? The second trial isn't due for a while yet."
"Didn't Lady Hayeon tell you?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
What on earth was he talking about?
No matter how many times Lim Hayeon scanned his schedule, she couldn't make sense of it.
Not until Kang Yunho said it himself.
"I'm off to meet Lady Jegal Hyang."