Preparing for the Grand Opening - 2
"The Mangeum Lord has returned?"
"Yeeees. He came back a few days agooooo."
So the old fox who believed no news was good news had finally crawled home.
He'd been silent so long I half wondered if he'd fallen victim to a tiger or some dreaded plague, the kind that used to terrify children in old tales. Apparently he'd survived just fine.
"Your grandfather threw his own granddaughter out? Did the Mangeum Lord perhaps fly into a terrible rage at Lady Jegal?"
The very moment he returned, he cast Jegal Hyang out of the estate. Wasn't she at that precious age when granddaughters are doted on? I couldn't understand it. It's not as if the man was the type to drop his sons and grandkids into a volcano's crater as part of their upbringing.
"Well, you seeee..."
Jegal Hyang fidgeted with her hands, head bowed, as if there was something she couldn't bring herself to say.
"So something did happen."
"H-he asked how things were going between you and me, Young Master Kang..."
My and Jegal Hyang's romantic history?
No way.
"Did you perhaps tell him everything, without holding anything back?"
"He... he asked whether we'd held hands yet, eeeeeek!"
Ah, so he did drop her into a volcano's crater.
In all the time the Mangeum Lord was away, everything Jegal Hyang and I had done amounted to: sharing a few meals, exchanging a gift, and solving a single case together.
Had we made any real romantic progress? Honestly? No.
Had the old man heard this and prescribed some drastic medicine?
"Hmhm. You haven't held hands?"
Lim Hayeon, why are you suddenly snickering through your nose?
"Wh-what? Yeeees."
"Hmhm. I see... Hmhm."
Lim Hayeon turned toward the bewildered Jegal Hyang and beamed a smile that said, look at me, the average-grade schoolgirl gloating because she got one more answer right than her friend.
She'd been pulling such a long face when Jegal Hyang first walked into the office, and now she was a garden in full bloom.
"What am I going to dooooo, Young Master Kaaaaang. I have nowhere to goooooo."
She looked up at me with tear-streaked pleading, but there was no ready solution.
"How about staying at my cousin-in-law's place for the time being?"
Jeon Gilsan's house, I meant.
"Your cousin-in-law's? Not heeeeeere?"
Ugh. Jegal Hyang bit her lip and dropped her head, wearing the look of an abandoned puppy betrayed by its owner.
That expression is against the rules.
"Wh-who said you could live here?"
"Hayeon-unni, can't I live here toooooo?"
"Of course you can't! And who gave you permission to call me unni?!"
"Ah, I, um, that is..."
What a mess.
In an instant, the office had descended into chaos.
Watching one person apply relentless pressure while the other slowly petrified, I found myself thinking of Sohee, a girl my own age. Sohee, you barely said a word, but you were the mature one all along, weren't you?
I missed her all of a sudden. She's doing well, right? I write to her often enough; it'd be nice if she wrote back sometime too.
"Young Master Kang."
While I was busy hiding from reality, a messenger had arrived from the Mangeum Hall.
"What business brings you here?"
"The Mangeum Lord summons you."
And here I was wondering when he'd finally call.
The second evaluation, postponed during the Mangeum Lord's absence.
I gathered my neatly organized documents and made my way to the Mangeum Lord's mansion.
"Heh heh heh."
The Mangeum Lord read through the materials I'd submitted for a long while, then burst out laughing.
Somehow his laughter made me even more nervous.
What would he nitpick today? But the words that came out of his mouth were entirely unexpected.
"You've worked hard."
"I beg your pardon?"
A compliment, at a moment like this?
What's going on? Did someone replace him while I wasn't looking?
"You rallied the Joseon people of Wuhan, had them pay their own way, and brought them in as partners in the delivery business. Then you taught the couriers lightness techniques and expanded the delivery territory. You didn't rest on a single success."
"The business runs smoothly thanks to your constant care and attention."
After all, with you gone, I had nothing to focus on but the business itself. I tucked a subtle barb into the words.
"Heh heh. While I was away, I heard an amusing rumor circulating through the streets. I hadn't realized you had such talents in that area as well."
The old man grinned at me with a look that said you sly rascal, clearly understanding his own meaning, and asked after my recent doings.
"I merely had luck on my side."
"Heh heh. Is that so? They're calling you the Renowned Joseon Constable these days. Word even spreads that the black-haired foreigner possessed the wisdom of Zhuge Gongming."
The Jegal Clan's young lady had been standing right beside me at the crime scene, and thanks to my borrowing a few famous lines from Zhuge Gongming, all manner of wild rumors were apparently making the rounds.
"How could the likes of me possibly be compared to Zhuge Wuhu? I simply had people gather information, and Lady Jegal Hyang graciously assisted me."
I answered with maximum humility. The Mangeum Lord didn't bother wiping the smile from his face, and spoke with the expression of a man who already knew everything.
"That's not what the girl says. She claims she only helped here and there, and that the deductions that made jaws hit the floor were all yours."
Seems Lady Jegal Hyang had oversold my contribution.
"I merely drew conclusions from the information placed before me. It was simple reasoning, nothing like the stories on the street."
There had only been three possible answers. Finding the right one wasn't exactly hard.
"Heh heh. That is the quality a man must have to stand above others."
The Mangeum Lord said this with crinkled, smiling eyes.
"Standing above others, my lord?"
"Whosoever stands above others must know how to command them. One needs the eye to judge people, to deploy manpower where it best belongs, and to produce the finest results. What is right and what is wrong. Which path to take and how. The one at the top must be the final arbiter of it all. That is the virtue required to become a great merchant."
The Mangeum Lord spoke to me like a seasoned professor lecturing a student on the ways of the world.
This was unsettling.
Praise and mentorship mode, out of nowhere?
Then again, thinking it over, I could see where this was headed. The debt hanging around my neck. Jegal Hyang, my matchmaking counterpart. With two shackles on me, perhaps he intended to raise me into a proper employee working under his wing.
My esteemed elder, I have no such intentions.
I've already laid plans to slip off both shackles with these two hands of mine.
A flash of rebellion rose in my chest, and I decided to push back against the old man's words.
"I didn't do my best for those beneath my feet. I did it for those I carry on my shoulders."
I have no intention of lording over people the way you do.
Lim Hayeon. The Joseon people of Wuhan. The women I must take responsibility for. Everything I do, I do for the sake of those I'm bound to protect.
I straightened my back and met the Mangeum Lord's gaze with solemn, steady eyes.
"...Yes. That's right. Heh heh. That's how it should be. Indeed."
The Mangeum Lord smiled warmly at me, as though gazing past my face at someone else entirely.
"..."
Damn it. Did I have the opposite of the intended effect?
The Mangeum Lord shuffled through the remaining documents, then nodded and delivered his verdict.
"You pass the second evaluation. However."
"Is there more I must do?"
"Your courtship has failed."
So that's why everything had gone suspiciously smoothly from start to finish.
"My lord, who could ever produce a right answer to love?"
Though of course, back in my old world, I was the model student who filled in three hundred thousand wrong answers.
"There's no answer to it. But there is such a thing as timing."
"Lady Jegal and I are taking our time, slowly deepening our relationship."
He wants me to get closer to Jegal Hyang. Meddling in his own granddaughter's love life — isn't that going a bit too far, sir?
What is this.
When I stared at him in frustration, the Mangeum Lord raised one corner of his mouth with the look of a man seeing straight through my heart.
"Taking your time... If by 'taking your time,' you mean dragging things out until this trial of mine is over, then—"
He'd seen right through me.
"He has instructed that living quarters be prepared on the third floor of the Daseogak."
There was no way he'd caught on to the contract dating.
So this must be the plan the old man had imagined for me:
Kang Yunho intends to keep his relationship with Jegal Hyang running on parallel tracks until the evaluation ends.
If no seed of love sprouts between the two of them, I will send him back to Tang Hwarin.
I have no heart in the matter, and Jegal Hyang has no initiative. Neither of them intends to close the distance, so I'll simply have to force them together.
That must have been why Jegal Hyang had been thrown out of the estate.
"Even if you are her grandfather, letting an unmarried granddaughter live under the same roof as a man outside the family will earn you nothing but the world's censure."
In the modern world, a kiss between lovers was a simple expression of affection. Here, it was a vow to spend a lifetime with that person.
Housing a man and a woman under one roof — even the Mangeum Lord would find himself the target of pointing fingers.
"Who said anything about living together?"
The old man answered my objection with perfect composure.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I told the girl to live on the third floor. I never said a word about you moving in as well."
"..."
Oh. So since she was reluctant to leave the house, he simply intended to let her see me often at the workplace. In that case, it's really none of my concern.
But the Mangeum Lord's next words shattered my expectations once more.
"That said, if she is to live there alone, I'll assign her guards to the Daseogak, but I have no intention of sending anyone to quarrel on her behalf."
"She'll find that terribly inconvenient."
The youngest daughter of the Jegal Clan surely couldn't have done so much as a single household chore in her life.
"If the girl is to become someone's wife one day, shouldn't she learn to keep a household of her own?"
"Hmmm."
What would happen if a lady of ladies — a girl who had never once done a chore in her life — moved out to live on her own?
I briefly pictured Jegal Hyang's solitary life.
A mountain range of dirty dishes. Laundry piled up so long no one could say when it had been shed. Dust and stray hairs carpeting the floor.
She steps out of the shower to find no clean towels, so she pats herself down roughly with a half-damp one that smells faintly of mildew—
No. Even so, surely she wouldn't live like Mr. Kang, veteran of exactly zero years of living alone.
Then what about meals? Can she even cook?
She's not going to collapse from malnutrition, is she?
"Heh heh. With a man fussing over her nearby, the girl will change fast enough."
In the end, he planned to let her run loose like free-range livestock — meaning, if you're worried, move in and look after her yourself.
"Lady Jegal Hyang is the youngest daughter of the Jegal Clan. We are neither married nor even promised in marriage. Could that arrangement possibly be acceptable? When the Jegal Clan learns of this, the whole compound will be ringing with alarm."
Jegal Hyang was, first and foremost, a daughter of the Jegal Clan — not of the old man's own Jang family.
No way would the Jegal Clan tolerate their precious jewel cohabiting with a black-haired foreigner.
Mangeum Lord, even you will find this one difficult, won't you?
"The girl's mother has given her blessing."
She... what?
"I went to see the girl's mother. She says yes."
The Jegal Clan, remember?
The youngest daughter of a chaebol dynasty is running around with Nguyen Yunho, and you're supposed to put a stop to it. What kind of free spirit transcending eras is this mother, exactly?
What is she thinking? Honestly.
Like father, like daughter, perhaps?
Let me catch my breath for a moment. Sort out this bewilderment swirling in my chest, quickly.
Living with Jegal Hyang is fine. We're in a contract relationship anyway.
The real problem is that I won't be able to respond if Lim Hayeon runs into trouble.
The moment I leave the guest hall, Lim Hayeon is left defenseless.
Oh? Wait just a second.
In that instant, a wonderful idea flashed through my mind.
There was a way to turn the Mangeum Lord's scheme against him.
"Must Lady Jegal Hyang live on the third floor of the Daseogak, specifically?"
"Hm?"
"I've lived above a bookstore, you see. Waking up in a dreary little room breathing musty mildew is bad for the health, and it does nothing for the atmosphere between a man and a woman either. It blurs the line between work and life. If it comes to that, wouldn't it be far better to live in a proper estate?"
"Not the third floor — an estate?"
"As you wish, my lord, I shall live in the same residence as Lady Jegal Hyang for the time being. We'll ride to work in the same carriage, share pleasant conversation, eat our meals together. Though... in exchange, you'll need to provide the residence."
"Quite forward of you all of a sudden. Very well. That much is no trouble."
The bait was laid.
Time to bring up the real business.
"There is one problem."
"Troubles can wait until after the wedding."
I wasn't thinking of that kind of problem.
Stall for a moment. The way I once hid fear behind a mask. Act as I did back then, concealing terror and performing ordinary life.
I arranged my face into an expression of profound dread and worry, then spoke.
"It's nothing of that sort. There is someone in Wuhan right now who means to take my life."
"...Means to take your life?"
The Mangeum Lord's brow furrowed in a heartbeat.
"When I dug into the Nokcheong Escort case, I found it wasn't the work of a single agency. A merchant caravan and several Sapa factions were entangled in it. I can't identify them for certain, but for days now I've sensed someone suspicious trailing me from the shadows."
"Hmm..."
The Mangeum Lord stroked his beard, looking faintly irritated.
"I have means to protect my own body, but shamefully, I have no talent for offense. I fear I might not be able to keep Lady Jegal Hyang safe."
This was the man who had already lost one grandchild once.
He wouldn't want to repeat the same tragedy twice. Am I right?
"Very well. I shall assign you guard warriors and provide a residence near the Daseogak."
Now that's more like it.
"So how did it gooooo?"
Back in the office, I walked past Lim Hayeon — whose face was written over with resentment — and approached Jegal Hyang, who was cowering in the corner.
She looked up at me with the expression of a puppy that had cried itself dry waiting for its owner to come home.
How do I put this?
In moments like these, don't circle around it. Rip the bandage off fast.
"Lady Jegal. Come live with me."
"Y-yes?!"
"I've received the Mangeum Lord's blessing. For the time being, you'll live with me. Are you all right with that?"
"G-gooood!"
Face flushed scarlet, Jegal Hyang nodded again and again like a machine with its RPM redlining.
One objective cleared, then.
"YOU! What did you just say?! What nonsense are you spouting?!"
I turned and walked toward Lim Hayeon, whose eyes seemed incapable of growing any wider.
"And Lady Hayeon."
Stay calm, Lim Hayeon. This is all part of my plan.
"YOU! What in the—!"
I barely managed to grab the shoulders of the stampeding wild mare that was Lim Hayeon.
Her face was full of grievance.
She thinks I made a decision this reckless without a second thought.
I gave her a reassuring look, and then made my second declaration.
"Lady Hayeon, you should come live with me too."
"Whaaaaaaat?!"