The Courtesan Gate — 3
Twenty-odd years ago, a courtesan had left for Joseon — and standing before me now was someone who still remembered her.
Hyang-ah.
The woman who had fallen in love with the head of the Tang Clan and, after a tragic ending, borne his child out of wedlock. She was also the mother I had written into the backstory of Dangga Pungun. So Hyang-ah had been one of Haomen's own. Well — as an apprentice courtesan, she could easily have come out of the Gi-mun like Lim Hayeon. But to think she'd been the Gi-mun Hyangju's own disciple.
"I-I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm just an ordinary man from Joseon."
The fact that I was the Tang Clan Head's illegitimate son was a secret, so I let my voice tremble and played the flustered fool. First things first: dig for information. With no way to know how much of it was true, I couldn't simply confess on the spot. When the pressing questions came, I would piece the truth together from her asking.
"So a fellow like that went and ate the cursed freak-dish only those purple-haired devils can stomach, did he?"
"How would you know about that?"
How did she know I'd swallowed a horrific poison I didn't even want to imagine?
"That potbellied fellow passed word along a while back. Said you were the Tang Clan Head's bastard, and asked whether anyone came to mind. He even tacked on that if his hunch proved right, I was to help you."
They say the favors and grudges of the murim tangle so intricately that none can tell where they begin or end — but was the Gi-mun Hyangju truly Hyang-ah's teacher? I turned to glance at Lim Hayeon, who by all rights should have been reeling at the news of my bastard blood, intending to explain for just a moment. Lim Hayeon, why is your face so perfectly calm?
"I already knew."
"How?"
"You've been using the Tang Clan's martial arts this whole time. Have you ever once heard me say a word about it?"
She had a point. Word of the pineapple pizza I ate back in Yichang must have spread all through Haomen. I nodded and turned my gaze back to the Gi-mun Hyangju.
"As far as I know, the Tang Clan Head has one bastard. Only one — the child my disciple Hyang-ah bore, the courtesan from Joseon."
Half-convinced certainty had settled into the Hyangju's eyes. If the Gi-mun Hyangju truly was Hyang-ah's teacher... let me think this through. A bastard's story is not the sort of tale you go about trumpeting, but right now I needed the Gi-mun Hyangju's help. Yes. I am Hyang-ah's son. Please help me. Just come clean and beg for favors?
No. That would be an amateur's move. If she meant to take on the Domun for her disciple's son, a bare admission wouldn't come close to cutting it. I needed a bond with the Gi-mun Hyangju far tighter than that.
I dredged Hyang-ah's diary up from the depths of memory — the diary I had chewed over so many times in service of the setting that it had long since been digested whole. Her life in Wuhan. Was there any record that could serve me now? Anything about Haomen had been complete news to me. Then what about her teacher — had there been nothing? No. There had.
"Hyangju of the Gi-mun."
Like a child addressing his mother's teacher, I called to her with every ounce of deference.
"Speak."
Cast out of the Tang Clan, Hyang-ah wrestled with her thoughts as she lifted her heavy body off the cold road. The man she loved had turned her away at his very gate — but she had at least slipped the registry's leash. No longer a courtesan, she was an ordinary woman now. Where was she to go? What was she to do? Would she walk back into the pleasure quarters on her own two feet, just to keep her belly from gnawing itself empty? Or return to Joseon and raise the child she carried? In the end, Hyang-ah chose the child over herself. Mentioning her teacher — saying she could never again show her face after the way she had fled, and that she would regret it all her days — she left behind one final remark.
Right. That passage was where the diary mentioned the Gi-mun Hyangju.
"Might your courtesan name be Chu Yeon — Autumn Abyss?"
I arranged my face into a deliberate could it be? look and studied the Gi-mun Hyangju. A flat yes, I am Hyang-ah's son would be an amateur's play. But if the Gi-mun Hyangju truly had been Hyang-ah's teacher, her courtesan name would be Chu Yeon, Autumn Abyss. And if I had known that much about her all along, the emotional thread between us could be pulled that much tighter.
"Chu Yeon is not my courtesan name."
"..."
Emergency!!! Code red!!!
I was done for. Should I say I'd been mistaken? That I'd heard it as a child, so my memory wasn't reliable?
Huh?
I looked at the Gi-mun Hyangju, making no effort at all to hide my flusterment — and found a pleased curve drawn at the corner of her mouth.
"Chu Yeon is not my courtesan name. Chu Yeon is my name."
"Oh."
Unless a woman was struck from the registry, a courtesan lived out her whole life under her courtesan name. To give up the birth name she would never have surrendered to any stranger was to declare the bond between us as good as blood. Which meant—
Hyang-ah's teacher. For the first time, the Gi-mun Hyangju pushed herself up from her half-reclined seat and sat perfectly upright.
"It is an honor to meet my mother's teacher."
Down on one knee, head bowed, I offered the Gi-mun Hyangju a fist-and-palm salute.
"Hyang-ah... the Hyang-ah who went back to Joseon... did she live well?"
How was I supposed to answer that? The only Hyang-ah I knew was the Hyang-ah of the diary. I couldn't afford a whiff of suspicion; giddy chatter was strictly forbidden; I had to say as little as humanly possible. So — open with the acting. Wear the face of a man coughing up an old, bitter past. And while I was at it, hand her exactly what she wanted to hear.
"She was a kind mother. A wiser wife than anyone in the village. But sometimes she would sit me on her lap and gaze out at the western night sky, telling me of a dashing hero who had once saved a maiden in distress."
"...That hopeless fool. She never forgot him to the very end, did she." Scowl as she might, the Gi-mun Hyangju's voice was soaked clean through with longing.
"I couldn't understand it as a child. Only once I was grown did I come to know why she spoke of it so mournfully, her eyes on the western night sky."
"And where is Hyang-ah now?"
"When a terrible plague swept the village, she could not outrun it." Eyes brimming as if to weep, lips curved in a smile — I let her feel every piercing degree of missing someone who would never come home.
"Ha... Hyang-ah is... dead...?"
Shocked enough to drop her long pipe, apparently. "Forgive me for bringing you such poor news." I bowed my head once more.
"No... it is I who raked through your heart. So. I heard you went to the Tang Clan. You returned an honored guest — why in the world do you still refuse the Tang surname?"
"My father was a man named Kang. Dead though he may be, how could I cast off the surname of the father who raised me with love from the day I was born?"
"Had you carried the Tang name, you would never have landed in this mess..."
Because it's all a load of crap, that's why. Because if the Tang Clan ever caught wind of it, I had a feeling things wouldn't end with a mere shower of poison.
"I went and settled those decades-old feelings once and for all. I had them promise to hold rites for my mother every year." I answered evenly, smiling at the Gi-mun Hyangju, who was watching me with pity.
"I'll wager that wretch nodded his head as brazenly as you please." There can't be many souls alive who would dare call Tang Baekho — a hero famed across the realm, head of the Tang Clan — a wretch. Well. As Hyang-ah's teacher, I supposed she carried her share of grudges.
"I thought of it as this unworthy son's one last chance to honor my late mother."
In any era, a child's devotion to his parents goes down smooth with strangers. I squared my shoulders and met the Hyangju's eyes like a son who had done his full duty — and she gave a nod that managed to be annoyed and approving all at once.
"...Did she ever speak of me?"
No. Beyond the name, not a word. Trouble. If I admitted I'd heard nothing more, she might sulk herself right out of helping. Was there no elegant way? Some blend of truth and lie that would satisfy her? There was.
Wearing the face of a man sunk in memories of his departed mother, I spoke. "Her name — that much I heard. But... she would say it with the look of someone sifting through the past. That a teacher stands in the place of one's own parents. That once you serve a teacher, you honor and follow them all your days — and never once do anything that would drive an iron nail into their chest."
"...And knowing all that, a child of hers went and nailed her teacher straight through the heart..." One of the Gi-mun Hyangju's eyes quivered.
"I can only beg forgiveness."
"It is not for a child to apologize for."
"..."
The Gi-mun Hyangju lifted her fallen pipe. Reminiscing about Hyang-ah, perhaps. Whether she needed the time to sort her feelings or not, she smoked until the room around us grew as hazy as a raccoon's den, and at last opened her mouth, her expression bitter.
"Hooo. What a bright child she was. If only she had never fallen in love with that damned wretch, the Hyangju of the Gi-mun today would be her — not me."
"You may not care for it, Hyangju, but the way things turned out, I stand here hand in hand with Lady Hayeon. All I can feel is gratitude to my mother." I clasped Lim Hayeon's hand tight, entirely on purpose.
"You..."
Hold on, Lim Hayeon. This is not your cue to be swept away. I was busy pivoting the conversation, smooth as silk, from Hyang-ah to Lady Hayeon here.
"Hooo. A mother who gave up everything for her child. A son who stakes everything for love. Like mother, like son." Was she searching for Hyang-ah's face behind mine? Her eyes, worn thin by a lifetime in the courtesan's trade, brimmed over with longing.
"Gi-mun Hyangju..."
"Yes. If that child thought of me as her mother, then as the mother of a wayward daughter, I have a duty to see through. I will help you."
"Thank you."
"Thank you so much!" Lim Hayeon slipped to my side and knelt with me, pressing her head to the floor. Good. I could see daylight at the end of this.
"I will do everything in my power to clear this child of her runaway-courtesan status and win back her registry. However — one thing gnaws at me." Chin propped on her hand, the Gi-mun Hyangju turned her gaze on Lim Hayeon.
"And what would that be?"
"The Domun spent far too much strength hunting a single girl. Yichang, the Nokcheong Escort Agency, and now this affair. Yesterday above all — turning the full might of the Domun on capturing her was far too strange."
"Isn't it because, if word ever got out that the Domun raided the Wushan branch, they'd have no excuse coming when retaliation found them?"
"If that were the case, they should have moved to kill her yesterday — not to take her alive."
"Fair point. The dead tell no tales." She really was right. Then why take her alive? If the object had been to silence the witness of the Wushan raid, yesterday should have ended with a blade, not a net.
"Then on what conceivable grounds would they want this child..."
"That part, I'll tell you myself." With a bang, the door behind us blew open.
"The Simun Hyangju?" And there he stood at last — the Simun Hyangju, wearing the face of a hunter who had finally run his quarry to ground.
"Mojiyakjo. I'll tell you the whole story of this affair."