Gimun - 2
"You've been crying again."
The most exclusive courtesan house in Wuhan. Inside a room prepared specially for a single courtesan.
A pure courtesan whose name was renowned even among the finest houses spoke to the pink-haired courtesan she knew well.
"I wasn't crying."
"Look in the mirror before you say that. Your makeup has run completely."
In the mirror, Lim Hayeon's eyes and cheeks were a smeared mess of tears.
"...Did he make it back safely? He isn't hurt anywhere, is he?"
Lim Hayeon swallowed her words for a long moment, then asked the courtesan once more, the worry refusing to leave her face.
"You must have heard it from the others already, but he was escorted back to the inn without incident."
"Thank goodness."
Only when the dependable pure courtesan gave her answer did Lim Hayeon finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Yesterday, the Domun's actions had been nothing short of madness. If she had kept running as she was, Kang Yunho would without question have come to serious harm.
Her own safety, or Kang Yunho's — which was she to choose? Even for a woman who dreaded returning to a courtesan's life with every passing day, in that moment the scale of her heart had tipped not toward herself, but toward him.
"The Gimun Hyangju will come for you later. Report what you saw, once more and in detail, and then await her judgment."
"Yes. I'll tell her everything, down to the last detail."
Not all hope was lost. There was her testimony from the attack on Wushan. The Simun, in the end, seemed to have found no evidence — but the Gimun, as the victim, might prove different. If it did, the unjust brand of runaway courtesan could be lifted from her at last.
Even if she was reduced to apprentice courtesan again, she could still cradle the small hope of seeing him once more.
"Once your account of the Wushan attack is finished, you must ready yourself to do your part as a full courtesan."
Prepare to receive guests in earnest — as a courtesan. At the pure courtesan's offhand remark, that small hope shattered into pieces.
The pure courtesan regarded the stricken Lim Hayeon with pitying eyes, then left the room.
She would have to entertain guests. Not as an apprentice — as a courtesan.
Heart sinking, Lim Hayeon buried her face in her hands and bowed her head.
"I prayed this day would never come..."
Months of effort, all spent staying by his side so that she would never become a courtesan — it had turned to sea foam in an instant. And yet what truly hollowed her out was something else entirely.
Why did I waste the time I had with him?
Too late. Far too late. Why had she waited so long to say it? She had squandered her days on an absurd misunderstanding, and out of petty pride had waited for him to confess first.
They had finally learned each other's hearts — and the time they might have treasured together because of it, she had let slip away in the most senseless way. Time that would never, ever come again.
"I'm such a fool."
Tears welled in Lim Hayeon's eyes once more, blurring her vision until the moisture hid everything from view.
Just as the tears sliding down her cheeks to the floor would never return, she would never hear an answer to the confession she had offered Kang Yunho.
And that truth tormented her all the more.
"I have come to escort you."
A warrior in a straw hat opened the door to Lim Hayeon's room.
"Am I being taken to the Gimun Hyangju? I'll get ready."
"No. Somewhere else."
The warrior answered her in a low, weighted voice.
"Then don't tell me—!"
Receiving a guest, right now? She had thought she had a little more time. Shock sealed Lim Hayeon's lips.
"Come along quietly."
"I-I'm still only an apprentice."
"Quietly, I said."
Lim Hayeon's voice wavered with panic, but the warrior's remained iron-firm.
"B-but I'm waiting for someone."
She fished desperately for an excuse — anything to keep from being dragged away.
"And who might that be?"
"That's..."
The Gimun Hyangju? The pure courtesan who had just left? Who on earth was she waiting for? The face that flooded Lim Hayeon's mind in that instant belonged to one man.
"Could it be."
The warrior's low, heavy voice lightened all at once — along with a smile.
"Huh?"
A voice far too familiar. A smile far too familiar.
No. It couldn't be. Lim Hayeon watched, stunned, as the straw hat rose — and with every inch of the face it unveiled, her eyes could only grow wider.
"The person you were waiting for is me?"
Beneath the straw hat, the face she had longed so desperately to see was smiling at her.
"You?! How are you in this place?"
"To take you home, naturally. Come."
Lim Hayeon could only stare, wordless, at the hand Kang Yunho held out to her.
I want to seize that hand this very moment. I want to leave with him. But she could not take it.
"I can't go back with you."
Thank you for coming for me.
"At least step outside with me first."
Thank you for refusing to give up on me.
"Last night will only repeat itself, that's all."
I want to go with you. I want our everyday life back.
"Today I brought reinforcements."
"I can't keep being a burden to you."
I hate it. I hate admitting it. But living with Lady Jegal might be better for you. The words would not leave her mouth.
"Lady Hayeon."
"Yes."
"Tell me your true heart. Your makeup is already ruined regardless."
The person she had ached to see. The man she had longed to bare her heart to the moment they met again. The man she wanted to throw her arms around that very instant.
Yet for his sake she could not voice a single word of it, and the feelings she could not release were already streaming down her face with her tears.
With a look of aching tenderness, Kang Yunho raised his hand and cupped her cheek.
May I say it? May I truly say whatever my heart wants? At his touch, which seemed to permit anything and everything, Lim Hayeon's heart finally broke open.
"Save me."
"I will."
"I don't want to become a courtesan."
"I have no intention of letting you become one."
"I want to be at your side."
"When was it ever not your place?"
"You — you are impossible!"
Laughter and tears. The truth pouring out of her, and the love answering it, made a glorious ruin of her face.
"Thank you for waiting for me. Let's go."
Lim Hayeon took Kang Yunho's hand once more. This time, she had no wish to let go of the hand where his heart was so plainly written.
Barely pulled that off.
We had slipped into the courtesan house disguised as delivery men, and then I had changed into a warrior's garb to reach Lim Hayeon's room.
Secure Lim Hayeon first. Thanks to the Simun operatives carrying out the Simun Hyangju's orders, drawing every eye in the house, the rescue had gone off without a hitch.
"And that's a wrap. We did it."
"Oh, the kid made it? You're late."
"My thanks. But... what exactly is going on here?"
Weren't they supposed to be holding the corridor so the Gimun's warriors couldn't get through? I had braced for a full-scale brawl, or at worst drawn blades — instead, each faction stood at a polite distance from the others, sipping tea in the hallway.
"Target's secured, so we settled it with words. We're all one sect here — what good would blade-work do? It's not as if we're the Domun."
"Ah... I see."
Apparently the only ones whose relations were bad enough to warrant actually drawing steel were the Domun.
"The Simun Hyangju says he'll need a little more time. Go on in ahead of us."
"In where, exactly?"
"The Gimun Hyangju is asking for the two of you."
You cannot be serious. We had only just, at great effort, secured Lim Hayeon — and now the two of us were to present ourselves before the Gimun Hyangju?
The Simun men delivered this with perfect nonchalance, as though telling a schoolboy the master had summoned him to the faculty office.
"Wouldn't it be better for Lady Hayeon to stay here?"
"It's quite all right. I knew you would come for me. I've been waiting."
As I stood gaping at the Simun men, a courtesan with a familiar face spoke to me.
"So it was you I saw last night."
"Both of you, come along. The Gimun Hyangju requests your presence."
Was it really safe to follow?
I wavered for a heartbeat, but at the Simun man's beckoning hand, I bowed my head at last.
"Branch Master. I have brought Young Master Kang and Hayeon."
"Show them in."
A vast chamber, so thick with incense and face powder that it prickled the nose. Past countless marten pelts spread across the floor, on something that might have been a chair or might have been a bed, sat a woman.
The chieftain of every courtesan in Hubei Province. The Gimun Hyangju.
Her thighs and the upper swell of her chest were daringly bare. With nowhere safe to rest my gaze, I lifted my eyes to her face — a woman who in one light looked mature and composed, and in another drowned in decadent allure, was watching me.
Is she truly in her fifties, like the rumors say?
No matter how I looked, she could pass for barely her late twenties. Had she mastered the Youth-Preserving Art — that anti-aging martial discipline counted among the essential arts of the courtesan trade?
The Gimun Hyangju took a long, deep draw on her long-stemmed pipe, her richly painted face unreadable, then opened her mouth to us.
"When you're done playing house, you go home. Storming into another person's house and kicking up a racket — where are your manners?"
Perhaps it was the tobacco. Her voice was husky now, but one could hear the clear elegance it must have carried in her youth — and it drilled into the ear.
Very well. Let's do this.
I deliberately steered Lim Hayeon back behind me and took a step toward the Hyangju.
"Surely that is how things work between a man and a woman. You play house to pile up fondness, and in the end the two of you walk hand in hand beneath a single roof."
Start light. Show an unshakable will, but open on a footing that invites no hostility.
"Throw yourself at a passing flame, and the only thing you keep is the wound."
"The woman is suffering in the fire as we speak. If I can carry her out of it, a few scars are a bargain."
I would walk into a pit of fire itself to save Lim Hayeon. I said it with a smile.
"You don't intend to yield a single word, do you."
The Gimun Hyangju glared at me with open displeasure.
"Grant my request, and I'll gladly keep my mouth shut for good."
"Go home quietly. I have summoned the Potbellied Waiter to this place, so once we put our heads together, we will see that the girl's problem is resolved with all due care."
"It is that 'resolution' of yours that sits so poorly with me."
The truth was, their tidy little agreement was exactly why I had barged in here.
"Then what manner of resolution have you come seeking?"
"I have come to ask that her name be struck from the Courtesan Registry."
"You believe this is a matter that ends with a payment?"
"If the Simun Hyangju and you, Hyangju, would only lend your aid, I will manage the rest by any means necessary."
Resolve the runaway courtesan problem instead of forging her into a courtesan — and I was hardly without means of repaying the favor.
"If you have no wish to become a target of the Domun — who rampage about like a maddened colt — withdraw quietly."
"If I hadn't prepared myself for exactly that, I would never have set foot in this place."
I let every trace of a smile drain from my face and spoke as a man who would not retreat an inch.
The deadened, bottomless gaze of a courtesan worn smooth by dealing with countless people swept over my body in a single pass. Her expression said she would never grant it. But I had no intention of backing away either.
I bore the Gimun Hyangju's scrutiny in silence, waiting for her to give ground first.
Had she yielded a step?
The Gimun Hyangju snorted at me and clamped the pipe between her teeth.
"Hoo. A long time ago, there was a man who stormed into the very heart of the Gimun as brazenly as you."
Between drags of tobacco, she murmured like someone dredging up a bitter memory.
"..."
"Before the flower had even bloomed, he carried off a tender bud, swearing she was his woman. Do you know how that man's story ended?"
"He lived happily ever after, I'd imagine."
"When his love cooled, he threw the courtesan away like a worn-out shoe."
"..."
Is this her own story?
"When a brief, hot flame burns out, cold reality always moves in. There was a noblewoman of a high house waiting for that man at home — and he came to realize he would one day have to show the courtesan he had taken up to that woman's face."
"I am not that man."
She seemed to worry on Jegal Hyang's account — though the two of us were, for now, still only in a contract courtship.
"A flower is happiest while it stands in the flower bed. Leaving a footprint in that child's heart for the rest of her days is cruelty enough. Do not pluck the flower and wound her further. I find your courage today admirable — so I will forget today's trespass. Take your leave now."
"I did not stage all this on a moment's reckless whim."
"And can you protect that child to the very end! A girl raised her whole life inside the Gyobang, taught nothing but the pleasing of men — a child who will be good for nothing whatsoever out in the world!"
The Gimun Hyangju's brow knotted and her voice rose at my answer.
I understood her meaning. Lim Hayeon, too, had knocked on the Gyobang's door because she was starving. If a man of half-hearted feeling carried a courtesan off only to abandon her, a brutal fate would be waiting at the end of that road.
"On that point, you are wrong."
"What?!"
But this case was different. She simply didn't know Lim Hayeon at all.
"Lady Hayeon is a woman who wakes with the earliest light and works until the latest hour of night. She grumbles now and then, but she is dutiful to a fault, she aches at the pain of others, and she overflows with care. Everyone who labors beside her sings her praises, and in her absence they miss her more than they miss anyone."
"..."
For the first time, the Gimun Hyangju's lips parted slightly, wrong-footed.
"A woman who never once learned to cook can now simmer a genuinely delicious kimchi stew for me. She may be helpless to put her feelings into words, but her jealousy she displays quite openly. And after dragging herself home from a brutal day, she steals in to cover me with a blanket before slipping back out."
"H-how do you know all that?!"
Lim Hayeon gaped at me, eyes wide with alarm.
Her secret diary had given it away a while ago. Not that any of that was the important thing right now.
"Gimun Hyangju. She is a woman who suits my side better than any flower bed."
I was not trying to pluck a flower from its bed. I only wanted to set her down where she truly belonged. I spoke to her, my voice earnest.
"That is what they all say."
"I did not come for a passing flame. I came to take responsibility for her."
"Responsibility, is it?"
"A man's vow to take charge of a woman's life is carved into his chest. A promise made with linked fingers vanishes the moment the hands let go; a flirtation vanishes when the flame burns out; a flower vanishes the instant it is plucked. But a vow carved into a man's chest does not vanish."
"A vow carved into the chest does not vanish, you say..."
"So please — help me take responsibility for the whole of her life."
I bowed my head slowly to the Gimun Hyangju.
There were still words I had not said — words owed before I could confess the fullness of my feelings to her. But one resolve would not change.
One night. The night she came to my room in tears. The day I vowed to wrench her free of a courtesan's fate.
From that moment on, I had already decided to take responsibility for her life.
When I raised my head again, the corner of the Gimun Hyangju's mouth had curved into a smile.
Did it get through?
"Shamelessly making off with a child another spent a decade and more raising — you take after your father."
Something entirely unanticipated came tumbling from the Gimun Hyangju's lips.
"I beg your pardon?"
"And hurling yourself headlong the instant love appears — that, you take after your mother."
"You know my parents?"
What on earth was this? She knew my mother and father?
"Born in Joseon you may have been, but you were made here, in this Wuhan. How could I possibly not know?"
Made in Wuhan. Born in Joseon. This was not the story of the Kang family.
In a flash, a piece of lore I myself had written swept through my mind.
The Tang Clan Head in his younger days. Hyang-ah, once an apprentice courtesan of Wuhan.
Their story had begun here, in this city.
"...How could you know that?"
Thick tobacco smoke spread and settled around her. With regret written across her face, the Gimun Hyangju looked past my features as though searching for someone long gone, and asked me.
"Hyang-ah... my Hyang-ah, my disciple — did she go back to Joseon and live happily?"