The Gi-mun - 5
"That girl is the Shadowless Divine Thief's daughter?"
"The Shadowless Divine Thief, with a daughter? Now that's news to me."
Confusion was written large across both Hyangju's faces.
Well, no wonder. If even the two Hyangju who governed every scrap of information in Hubei Province had been kept in the dark, it was hardly a thing anyone could swallow easily.
How things had come to this was simple enough to work out.
The Shadowless Divine Thief must have been desperate as well. For the child of a criminal, nothing more than a parent's identity coming to light is often enough to invite terrible harm. If the Shadowless Divine Thief had a child, he would certainly have hidden them away.
"I will vouch for her myself."
I stepped toward the Hyangju with a confident expression.
"You?"
"I brought something along, just in case."
From my breast I produced a single, irrefutable proof that Lim Hayeon was the Shadowless Divine Thief's child.
"Is that... the Shadowless Divine Thief's Black Money?"
"By chance, I was given the fortune of forming a bond with my sworn elder brother."
A Black Money issued by a man whose trail had gone cold ten years ago — one couldn't disbelieve it even if one tried.
"So the Shadowless Divine Thief was alive all this while... I see. No wonder you've been straining so hard to protect that girl from the very start. Now then, child — who else knew of this?"
The Gi-mun Hyangju looked Lim Hayeon up and down as she spoke, apparently still determining whether the girl truly was the Shadowless Divine Thief's daughter.
"Only Chief Gwak and a few of the Gyobang women knew."
Flustered by the mention of her father, Lim Hayeon kept failing to hold her expression together.
"Gwak? That rascal was friends with the Shadowless Divine Thief, and he never thought to report intelligence like this?"
Friends matter more than superiors — isn't that simply the way of the world? The Simun Hyangju, flabbergasted, couldn't manage to close his mouth.
"Right. Usan Gyobang — that's where the old woman's trusted confidants were stationed, ten years ago."
"...Then the former Gi-mun Hyangju and the former Domun Hyangju must have known."
Caught under the Gi-mun Hyangju's gaze, the Simun Hyangju barely shut his mouth and nodded.
"So he meant to keep his daughter safe. Now I understand why the Shadowless Divine Thief vanished without a trace one day."
At the Gi-mun Hyangju's words, the Simun Hyangju nodded along as well.
"And the disciple of the dead Domun Hyangju is the Domun Hyangju of today. He must have known Lim Hayeon's true identity."
…
Quick work, piecing all that together.
As expected of Haomen's Hyangju. From one single fact, they'd untangled everything they knew in a single sweep.
Lim Hayeon could not find her voice, reeling from one shocking revelation after another.
"It seems the business with Lady Hayeon was never about silencing witnesses — it was about securing her."
If the Domun Hyangju knew Lim Hayeon's identity and had also, by chance, tracked down where the Shadowless Divine Thief was living, then his path had been a simple one.
Wait until the branch heads backing him numbered a majority. Then move on Usan Gyobang.
Lim Hayeon was the one missing piece — the finishing stroke, the dot upon the dragon's eye — that would make the Domun Hyangju a true power within Haomen.
"With his majority all but secured, he planned to use the raid on Usan Gyobang to swap the branch heads for Domun men — and take the girl at the same time."
"That means I'll have to rethink matters. I must speak with the Simun Hyangju for a while. Step outside, all of you."
I nodded and turned away.
"Simun Hyangju. Might I ask you just one thing?"
What is this now? I had been on my way out of the room when I saw Lim Hayeon approach the Simun Hyangju and ask him something.
"Right, there was that. How did you come to know of it?"
…
Why did Lim Hayeon look so stricken?
"Lady Hayeon. What's the matter?"
I asked it as she dragged her feet out through the doorway.
"...The symptoms my mother showed when she passed — they're the same as when the Simun Hyangju's wife died of poisoning."
…
So it seemed those harmed by the civil strife ten years ago had not been only the Hyangju inside that room.
Looking one breath away from weeping, Lim Hayeon sank down heavily into a chair.
"After word of that man stopped coming, it wasn't long before my mother fell ill from pining and wasted away. And even when she finally breathed her last, he never showed so much as his shadow."
Misfortune upon misfortune — and how would it feel, I wondered, to realize too late that all of it had been wickedness worked by another's hand?
I could not begin to fathom it.
"Perhaps he simply could not come to you."
All I could do was lighten the weight of her gloom a little, by calmly untangling one misunderstanding long left to fester.
"He... he was trying to protect me?"
"I imagine he believed that once he vanished, they would leave you untouched."
"But my mother died."
The injustice of a girl who had lost her mother at the tender age of nine came pouring out.
"And yet you lived."
I sat down beside her and, with my sleeve, barely caught the tears that threatened to spill.
"...I don't know. I don't know what is happening anymore."
This was a woman who had lived her whole life cursing her father, the Shadowless Divine Thief.
If the truth was that he had vanished in order to shield his family—
If the reason he never once appeared before her had been her safety—
If the reason he stayed on in Hubei even after erasing his trail had been worry for her—
"For now, let's wait until those two finish their talk."
Nothing in this world can console ten years of grief in a single moment.
I'm not going anywhere. I'm right here beside you. All I could do was take her trembling hand in mine, and mean it with everything I had.
"Kang Yunho. You alone — come in."
So the discussion had finally ended. I gave the shoulder of a barely-composed Lim Hayeon a gentle pat and slipped quietly into the room at the Gi-mun Hyangju's summons.
Was the Simun Hyangju gone?
"There are three ways this can go."
Straight to the point, as ever. Fine by me — we haven't time to spare.
I fixed my face into the stiff expression of a man bracing himself, and faced the Gi-mun Hyangju.
"Do I even have a choice in the matter?"
"You do. We have resolved to help you, so I will hear your thoughts."
"Then speak, please."
"The first is war. The Gi-mun and the Simun will move against the Domun. Even if we never find proof of the Usan raid, we will seize on a pretext and strike."
"Civil war, then."
"Just so. It is not a decision to be taken lightly. So long as the Domun has co-opted half our branches, blood will flow in rivers even with the Simun and the Gi-mun joined hand in hand."
A civil war of Haomen against itself.
I studied the Gi-mun Hyangju in silence. This was the very thing she had striven to prevent, even at the cost of handing Lim Hayeon over.
Gi-mun Hyangju, I know you're trying not to let it show. But keep knocking that empty pipe against the ashtray, and your displeasure is plain as day.
"And the second option?"
Let's keep this moving.
"The second is sending that girl far away. The most peaceful path, to be sure."
"Lady Hayeon, you mean?"
"She lives out an ordinary life somewhere beyond the Domun's reach in Hubei. However — your connection to her has already come to light. Until every last problem is resolved, you will neither meet her nor send so much as a word."
"Then does that not mean that so long as the Domun stands, I will never see Lady Hayeon again?"
"Parting can be a happiness for both."
The Gi-mun Hyangju said it as if it were nothing, slowly tucking fresh tobacco into her pipe.
Certainly the smoothest solution on paper. But look here.
"If parting would have satisfied me, I would not be sitting in this room right now."
Would I have fought my way this far if that were the man I am?
At my resolute tone, the Gi-mun Hyangju slowly lit her tobacco and opened her mouth to me once more.
"Hoooo. If you despise that as well, then there is a third way. One where you need never part from the girl — and no blood need be spilled."
You could have opened with that one, you know.
"Then I'll take that one, if you—"
"Before that, there is something I must ask you."
"By all means."
What could she possibly want to know?
Memories of my mother? How I came to terms with the Tang Clan Head? Or perhaps how far things have gone between Lim Hayeon and me?
I can improvise my way through most anything, so fire away.
"Tang Hwa-rin. What was that girl to you, again?"
Ah.
"She is my fiancée."
The words leapt from my mouth without so much as a heartbeat of hesitation.
"So a man with a fiancée already goes and takes in that girl besides."
A faint murderous heat was rising in the Gi-mun Hyangju's voice. Please tell me you are not about to crack my skull open with that pipe.
Thankfully, she seemed to be waiting for my answer.
What on earth do I say to that?
And why are you the one getting angry over it?
There's also the childhood friend I'm wed to, future promised and all — and lately a matchmaking prospect besides. If I said that out loud, my skull truly would end up in pieces.
In truth, this answer required neither a sniveling excuse nor any panicked scrambling.
Because I happened to be carrying a special weapon, forged for use against the Gi-mun Hyangju alone.
"I am not the Tang Clan Head."
I took one step toward the Gi-mun Hyangju, chin held high.
"Not the Tang Clan Head, you say?"
She squinted one eye at my words, and I pressed on regardless.
"I am no wretched cur who would carelessly cast aside a woman who gave me her heart — a woman to whom I gave mine."
"And what, pray, do you intend to do?"
"I will take responsibility for every last one of them."
However much of this was theater before the Gi-mun Hyangju, these words alone were no performance.
I would take responsibility for the heroines who had given me their hearts. I would tear them free of their cursed fates.
The vow carved into my chest would not be erased.
As though to engrave that old resolve into my heart a second time, I laid my hand over it.
"Your father said much the same."
The Gi-mun Hyangju spoke with a scornful little laugh.
"I am a Kang, madam, not a Tang. I ask that you not look at me and see a man who abandoned love, crushed beneath the weight of the Sichuan Tang Clan."
Now it was my turn to be angry.
I spoke with all the seething fury of a player whose character, raised through a month of grinding, had been rendered garbage by a single patch.
"So you claim to be different from your father."
"If you have had me investigated, then I trust you already know how I have lived."
"I have heard it said you are the most successful Joseon man in all of Wuhan."
"And every last bit of it, I won not with a family's power, but with my own two hands."
I spread both arms wide, like a man cradling an armful of gold and silver treasure.
"Go on. Keep talking."
First, raise both hands. Like a man bowed under an immense weight.
"The Tang Clan Head, crushed beneath the boulder called family, was forced in the end to let fall what he held in his hands. But I — for the sake of the women I love — am laying a solid bedrock beneath my own two feet."
I lowered my arms and pointed both palms at the floor.
The man crushed by his burden, and the man standing tall upon his own foundation. With my whole body, I was showing her precisely how far apart the Tang Clan Head and I stood.
…
Speechless, are we?
Good. Now for the sorrow. Clench both fists and draw them in toward your chest. Wear the face of a man yearning for the beloved mother he can never see again.
"Gi-mun Hyangju. I have no intention of letting another woman suffer the very pain my mother endured. To take responsibility as a man. To keep both Hwa-rin and Lady Hayeon at my side — that is why I stand here."
"Oh, the girl outside that door would simply love to hear you say so."
An unexpected counterattack, from all places?
"Hahahaha! She'll no doubt seize me by the hair and give me an earful for it, but let anyone say what they will — I will never abandon a woman I have sworn to take responsibility for."
Let the laugh land, then let the expression turn grave. Make it unmistakable: these are women I will never, ever yield.
Well? Satisfied?
The Gi-mun Hyangju's answer did not come at once.
As though recalling something long vanished from the world, she regarded me for a while with a gaze steeped in old regret.
"...Come closer."
"Yes, ma'am."
I slowly closed the distance to the Gi-mun Hyangju.
"As I thought — your face may take after your father, but your eyes... those are your mother's."
I believe you are mistaken there, ma'am. But objecting would only cost me, and since you never actually met her, I shall take it as a kindness.
"If my eyes let you see my mother again, then look as long as you please."
I held the Gi-mun Hyangju's gaze, one knee bent to the floor. She gave a derisive snort, as if I were being absurd.
Right — the soulful gazing was laying it on far too thick.
"...In any case, from this day on, you are not to set so much as a toe inside a courtesan house."
"I beg your pardon?"
"A face like that, carrying on so shamelessly. You'd have every last courtesan alive weeping into her sleeve."
"Haha."
A satisfied smile had settled onto the Gi-mun Hyangju's lips.
"Good. Be brazen, then — so long as you are an improvement on that wretched bastard. Now then. I shall tell you the third way."
"With that method, we can save the girl."
To think a way like that even existed.
Yes. This way, we can save Lim Hayeon.
"Lady Hayeon."
The moment I had heard the plan, I crossed to Lim Hayeon, who had been waiting restlessly by the door.
"You're done in there?"
"Lady Hayeon. Don't misunderstand — just hear me out."
When I took hold of her shoulders, Lim Hayeon stared up at me, thrown.
"Wh-why so suddenly?"
Silently, I met her eyes.
Perhaps she understood this was no time for jesting. Lim Hayeon stilled her expression and waited for my answer.
What I am about to say —
Yes, it is shocking. Don't be shocked.
Yes, it invites misunderstanding. Don't misunderstand.
"Lady Hayeon."
"Yes?"