Opening the Gate (7)
"What on earth is this..."
When Young Master Kang told me that he is Hopil, I honestly felt like I might cry.
Thank you so much for sharing with me a secret you couldn't tell anyone else.
To think the person I once praised Dangga Pungun to was the author Hopil himself.
The illustrations I draw will become the official artwork recognized by author Hopil. I'm so, so happy.
"Urk?! Y-Y-Young Master Kaaang?!"
This was bad. The shock of what she had read had wrung a mutter right out of her before she could stop it. Jegal Hyang was a martial artist—there was no telling whether she might wake.
At the sound of Jegal Hyang's sleep-murmurs, Lim Hayeon hurried the diary back to its place and slipped out of the room as fast as her legs would carry her.
"He's Hopil?"
Clutching a chest that refused to settle at the unbelievable truth, Lim Hayeon barely made it back to her own room. Kang Yunho, Hopil? What in the world was that supposed to mean?
It was hard to believe, and yet the exchange diary had been filled, unmistakably, with the fact that Kang Yunho was Hopil—and with praise for Dangga Pungun, Hopil's own work.
"Could he have been bluffing?"
Lim Hayeon decided to try denying what she had seen, if only for a moment. Men bluffed to win a woman's heart often enough. She turned the possibility over in her mind, but before long she was shaking her head. He was not a man who would tell a lie like that. Never.
Then how was she to explain the distance that had closed between the two of them? In the end, she had no choice but to arrive at a conclusion she could scarcely believe. Kang Yunho was Hopil. And the two of them had become sharers of a secret.
"Manager Kang Yunho is really Hopil?"
Her heart would not calm. She could neither sit still nor stand quietly; she wanted to shake him awake this very instant and demand what he thought he was playing at.
"As if I could ever ask him..."
If he asked how she knew, what was she supposed to say? That she had secretly read their exchange diary? Picturing the contemptuous look that would come back at her from Kang Yunho, Lim Hayeon had to choke down the urge to dive into the nearest hole and disappear.
If she could not ask, only one path remained. On the assumption that Kang Yunho was Hopil, Lim Hayeon began retracing everything he had done until now.
"If he really is Hopil..."
The curtain of doubt she had never once touched. The moment Lim Hayeon lifted it, countless pieces of circumstantial evidence came flashing through her mind—until they arrived at a question that stopped her breath and refused to answer.
"...Had she ever once seen him go off to meet Hopil?"
Kang Yunho's dearest friend. Hopil. And yet not once had Lim Hayeon ever seen the two of them meet.
"The Tang Clan's illegitimate son."
Lim Hayeon recalled what the Yichang branch manager had said. An illegitimate son of the Tang Clan, and a man trained in the Tang Clan's hidden-weapon arts. If anyone was born to write a novel with the people of the Tang Clan at its heart, it was him.
So why had she never once suspected?
"His eye for a story and his way with words were exceptional, too."
She had assumed that was simply because he was the one who had discovered Dangga Pungun. In truth, he had been offering earnest counsel all along—as the author himself.
"And if Hopil was not a silly pen name chosen to hide his identity, but one chosen to reveal it..."
A black-haired man of Joseon. Kang Yunho. What better pen name could there be than Hopil—a barbarian's brush?
A hollow laugh escaped Lim Hayeon at the absurdity of it. Why had she never realized it all this time? The hours spent at his side, everything she knew about him—all of it had been pointing straight at Hopil.
"Why? Why on earth..."
The author she respected above anyone else, Hopil, was Kang Yunho. Lim Hayeon could not keep smiling at the conclusion she had landed on. Not because this was not the Hopil she had imagined. Nor because he had hidden his identity from her.
"Why did he confess the truth only to that woman?"
Why would the man who had always thought of her before anyone else keep his identity from her? Why reveal it to the very woman he had claimed to feel nothing for?
In the end, Lim Hayeon could not help but arrive at the one hypothesis she had wanted never to think of.
If his heart were wavering.
If, without her ever knowing it, his heart had turned away from her—and toward Jegal Hyang.
A truth dragged into the light by pure accident. And through the crack it had torn open in her heart, an emotion called unease had begun to pour in.
"We really do need a carriage of our own, Miss Hayeon."
Teatime, after breakfast. Even the owner of a business was expected to discuss a major expense with her executives first. Kang Yunho had raised the matter to win purchase approval from Lim Hayeon, who managed their finances, for the item they needed most at the moment.
"..."
"Are you feeling unwell somewhere?"
Lim Hayeon's face, sleepless through the night, was heavy with worry and fatigue.
"No, I'm fine. Why a carriage?"
Too soon to let anything show. Press him when the time is right. Putting her color right, Lim Hayeon performed her usual manner.
"Between running the inn and managing the Daseogak branch, it seems we've been calling for carriages far too often. It might be better in the long run to simply buy one."
"Buying a carriage is hardly a matter of a coin or two. Even if it costs a little more, I think it's better to keep hiring a driver as we go."
"There was that incident before—and what happened to you as well, Miss Hayeon. Which is all the more reason, I'd say, to hire a driver we can truly trust."
"Ah... then let's do it that way."
Recalling the affair in which Kang Yunho had very nearly been carried off, Lim Hayeon nodded.
"Haha. I knew you'd approve, so I drew up an estimate. Have a look."
Like a husband gingerly presenting a new computer build to his wife, Kang Yunho carefully passed over the carriage estimate.
"We can't think only of the carriage, you know. There's a horse to buy, the cost of keeping horse and carriage fed and maintained, a driver to employ—and then the purchase of the carriage itself on top of it all. This is shaping up to be far too large an expense."
It was simply too much money. Scanning down the estimate, Lim Hayeon frowned.
"It is true that we'd be paying a painful sum."
"At this price, wouldn't it be better to find a carriage we could call on regularly instead? There are Hometown Association members who work as drivers, after all. I'll go make the rounds and ask around the association myself."
Whether Kang Yunho's heart was truly wavering, she could not know. But waver herself she must not. Like a wise wife tactfully steering a husband whose eye had begun to stray, Lim Hayeon offered her counsel.
"U-um, excuse meee."
Jegal Hyang, who had been watching the pair, called out to them.
"Yes, Miss Jegal?"
When their eyes turned to her, Jegal Hyang hid the lower half of her face behind the estimate, looking embarrassed, and ventured her suggestion with care.
"Sh-shall I buy it for youuu?"
"You, Miss Jegal? Haha. That's quite all right."
He had raised the subject to win approval for a purchase, not to ask for it as a gift. Kang Yunho declined with a laugh.
"As the estimate makes plain, it's hardly a sum one can toss around with an offer to buy."
Lim Hayeon added a curt word of her own. Even a meal out with him meant tightening her belt and making do with a single bowl of gukbap—soup over rice—at a cheap joint. Buying a carriage was beyond all reckoning; she couldn't even guess how many bowls of gukbap a person would have to go without to afford one.
Blinking in puzzlement at the pair's dissuasion, Jegal Hyang soon opened her mouth.
"W-well... at this price, I think I could buy it with the New Year's money I've been savinggg."
"...Pardon?"
At those words, both their faces froze in an instant.
"This carriage looks like a fine one, so I'll buy you this oneee."
Jegal Hyang pointed to the most expensive carriage on the estimate.
"Haha. That one's only on there because I deliberately showed you the priciest option to win approval. What I actually want is this somewhat cheaper one right here..."
Even the carriage estimate was laced with Kang Yunho's trickery, seeded to draw out a compromise. He held out a single estimate offering passable quality at a reasonable price—something a man could settle on.
"It's for you to ride around in, Young Master Kang. S-so I think buying one at this level is fineee."
But Jegal Hyang had no intention of settling, either. Even Kang Yunho, ordinarily so meticulous about keeping his expression in order, found his jaw hanging open for a moment.
"Isn't that stretching yourself a little too far?"
"Ummm... no, Mother told me to save it for an occasion like thisss."
What her mother had actually said was to save it for the day she married. If a woman meant to keep the man she thought of as her companion for life, she needed to know how to give him gifts, too. It had been one of her mother's naggings, which Jegal Hyang had let slip past one ear.
"...In that case, er, would it also be acceptable to buy a rather fine horse?"
"You—!"
"Haha. The three of us will be riding together anyway, so let's get a good one. Miss Jegal, why don't you have a brief word with me in private."
"Y-you can just buy whatever Young Master Kang wishes forrr."
"You mean it?!"
"..."
Wordless, Lim Hayeon stared at Kang Yunho's face—lit up with excitement as he asked after Jegal Hyang's wishes. If she had been drawing a salary, could she have bought him the carriage he wanted? No. It would have been impossible.
Lim Hayeon quietly bit down on her lower lip. He would not have his heart swayed by Jegal Hyang. And even if he was wavering, she herself must not be. She had resolved on exactly that only moments ago.
And yet, gazing at the gulf between herself and the rival she had never wanted to see, Lim Hayeon found her heart would not settle easily.