Three People - 5
"Ugh, my stomach..."
Maybe the real culprit was trying to strike a dramatic pose—half-wondering whether the two women were watching from somewhere—and then downing every last drop of that lethal liquor anyway.
Somewhere in my belly, it felt like a rehearsal was already underway for splitting Kang Yunho into five equal parts ahead of schedule.
I needed to settle my stomach somehow. I dragged myself out of bed, braced a hand against the wall, and shuffled toward the living room. Maybe I could ask the maid to fix me something for it.
"Hm? Miss Hayeon?"
Stepping into the living room, I found Miss Hayeon setting down a tray of side dishes.
"Sit. I made hangover soup—I'll bring it out."
Lim Hayeon said this wearing the expression of a new bride seeing her husband off to work.
"Young Master Kang, I've mixed you some honey water. Please, drink."
Jegal Hyang held out a bowl brimming with honeyed water.
"Thank you. But you two—what on earth is going on?"
Where had yesterday's icy atmosphere gone? Here they were, waiting on me with easy warmth?
"Young Master Kang, let me apply the Golden Sore Powder for you. Give me your arm."
"After drinking that much hard liquor, can you really make it to work later? Shall I send someone to tell them you're taking the day?"
"..."
Was I dreaming? Had the liquor not fully worn off? Was this some kind of performance? Or could it be...?
As I stood there gaping like a fool, Lim Hayeon let out a small sigh and came toward me.
"You're telling me to leave your side and live an ordinary life? Very well. It seems an ordinary life simply isn't possible beside you after all."
"..."
That hadn't sounded like acceptance. It had sounded like a condemned man's last meal.
Right. I had resolved to accept whatever decision they made. I pressed my lips shut and waited for her next words.
Seeing my expression harden, Lim Hayeon took my hand and said with a faint smile,
"So you'd better treat me specially, not ordinarily."
What? It took my brain a long moment to catch up.
"Miss Hayeon..."
Acceptance. She had truly accepted me.
"Save the gratitude for later. Now turn around."
As I moved to step closer, she caught hold of me and swiveled me in the opposite direction.
"Young Master Kaaang."
Perhaps because I felt suddenly left out of the moment—there behind me stood Jegal Hyang, both hands folded neatly before her, gazing up at me with eyes like some small, timid woodland creature.
"Miss Jegal."
Had the two of them planned this together?
Leaving Lim Hayeon behind me, I carefully stepped in front of Jegal Hyang.
"Y-Young Master Kang, you are truly a terrible person."
Jegal Hyang dropped her gaze, her grip tightening on her own wrist as she vented her grievance at me.
"I'm sorry."
"B-But from now on, I'm going to l-like a man who already has a f-fiancée. So I-I'm a bad woman too."
Her face, past flushed and well into crimson, lifted to meet mine.
"I'm sorry—what?"
"So... from now on, I don't want us to be a fake relationship anymore. I want it to be real."
Jegal Hyang stepped toward me and cautiously raised a trembling hand.
"Miss Jegal..."
How could I refuse a hand offered after so much agonizing, asking me to take hold of it?
As if handling some priceless treasure, I gently took Miss Jegal's hand.
"Hnnnghhh!"
Please don't let that composure of yours crumble on me now.
"Miss Hayeon."
I called to the woman behind me.
"Mmhm. Me too."
Lim Hayeon approached and held out her hand with practiced aloofness.
A man with a fiancée. How much betrayal must my confession have dealt her? How much resentment must she have swallowed for the selfishness of wanting to remain at that man's side? How long had the two of them agonized through the night?
"I'll do right by you both. I truly will."
These were the women who had chosen to stay beside me after countless hours of agonizing. All I could offer in return was to take their hands once more and make my promise.
"Miss Hayeon, let's begin preparing in earnest."
With my feelings finally sorted, I took my seat at the table. The hangover soup Miss Hayeon had made was delicious—apart from being a touch too salty, that is.
"Yes."
"What preparations?"
Jegal Hyang tilted her head at me from across the table.
"We're going to begin working on erasing Miss Hayeon's status as a runaway courtesan."
"Wh-What kind of work? I'll help too."
"Miss Jegal, with your help it's as good as gaining an army of ten thousand."
Was this what it felt like to become a community of shared fate? With Miss Jegal's help, things would certainly go far more smoothly.
"What exactly do you intend to do?"
When I shot Lim Hayeon a helpless look, she answered Jegal Hyang for me.
"It seems we'll be starting by scouting out rich households with walls worth climbing over at night."
"...I'm sorry, what?"
Please don't let that be what shocks you.
Feeling the hangover soup settle my stomach, I opened my mouth to explain our purpose to Jegal Hyang.
"We're going to make Miss Hayeon the most famous thief in all of Hubei Province."
"Whaaaaat?!"
"These are the files Haomen sent over on Wuhan's wealthy."
In my office, Lim Hayeon handed over box after box of paperwork from Haomen. These damned documents seemed to breed faster than bookworms.
I'm an employer in my own right—isn't this going too far?
I couldn't exactly snap What is this plan?! Who put these files together like this?! at pages someone had polished through a week of all-nighters, but I would still very much like to escape this document hell, thank you.
"We'd best start picking our targets from these. Miss Jegal, might I ask for your help organizing the files?"
"Ah, um... yes!"
When I handed them over, Jegal Hyang gauged my expression before accepting.
As I thought—she wasn't keen on aiding a burglary.
"If your heart isn't in it, you don't have to."
"I-I understand your intentions, Young Master Kang. And I want to help Hayeon unni, so i-it's all right."
Really? You say it's all right.
"Then I'll leave the sorting to Miss Jegal for the moment..."
In that case, I'd better call upon the Murim's own office-automation suite: the Zhuge Clan.
"I'm sorry—what?"
Before her complaints could erupt, I swiftly stacked a tower of document boxes beside Miss Jegal.
"Miss Hayeon, let's you and I think about something more important."
"There's something more important than finding a house to burgle?"
Miss Jegal can handle that part.
"Self-promotion."
Now that we'd clawed our way out of document hell, it was time to put our creativity to work.
"Promotion? Didn't we agree Haomen would handle the rumors?"
"We'll promote ourselves as well, to put those rumors to active use. We'll make the Shadowless Divine Thief a figure people can gossip about in concrete terms. Showing a signature symbol with every job, for instance."
Everything planned so far was, in the end, merely the plan of a righteous thief. We needed a way to show the world that this thief's name was the Shadowless Divine Thief.
"Like how the Yellow Turban rebels tied on yellow scarves?"
"Exactly. Say—any thought of wearing something short-skirted and fluttery?"
As any phantom thief knows, the costume is half the performance.
"You want me to wear courtesan's clothes and get caught on purpose? A thief who gets seen has already failed, you know."
"Well, if you used methods like waving a wand and vanishing into a jar, or throwing a cloth over yourself and vanishing the moment it's pulled away, that might work..."
"I can't do parlor tricks like that..."
"Hmm."
Why ever not?
By all rights, a lady phantom thief should flutter about in gauzy robes, hair swept up high, twirling her magic wand as she rakes in gold, silver, and jewels in every color of the rainbow.
Hopeless. A lost cause.
The Shadowless Divine Thief's existing outfit showed no skin, but it was that distinctive skin-tight cut—so what if I added some trim and ornamentation? Something similar, changed just enough to mark Season 2 apart from Season 1.
"For some reason, I'm seeing a gaze with a few personal biases mixed in."
Lim Hayeon eyed me with open suspicion.
"What about leaving evidence behind?"
Quick on the uptake, as ever.
"Evidence?"
"Leaving a square of black cloth where the stolen goods used to be, or writing out the words Shadowless Divine Thief. The victims get robbed, and only afterward learn who took their things. Such strange behavior would make the rumors spread all the faster."
A classic phantom thief's technique: leave your symbol where the stolen goods used to be. Well? A brilliant idea, no?
When I beamed at her in triumph, Lim Hayeon frowned faintly, as if something about this displeased her.
"Have you ever heard tales of that man's old days?"
"What do you mean?"
There was only one person Lim Hayeon would call "that man."
The previous Shadowless Divine Thief. Uncle Wang.
"Once, that man slipped into a mansion guarded by Nine Sects warriors, stole the valuables, and stamped his seal on the faces of every warrior asleep on watch. From what I hear, the Nine Sects flew into an absolute fury, saying they'd been humiliated."
"Hahaha."
And not just any warriors—warriors of the Nine Sects, pillars of the orthodox alliance. To pull such a prank on them...
Uncle Wang. In his prime, the man truly was a nationwide legend.
"It really is a fine idea, then. We should decide what to leave behind as a symbol. Something like a coin that's mine alone."
Lim Hayeon nodded with a smile.
"Let's do that. And..."
Choosing a symbol was simple enough. The problem lay elsewhere.
"What is it?"
"Once Miss Hayeon begins her work, the rumors will spread on their own—but I've been racking my brain for a way to broadcast it to the masses all at once."
Lim Hayeon needed to become the most famous thief in Hubei Province, and fast.
Haomen's people lived at the bottom rung of life, so word would trickle up gradually, mouth to mouth. Wasn't there something surer, something faster?
"It's not as if a thief is going to hand out flyers, is it? Surely that much is enough?"
A fair point.
It wasn't as though we could blanket the streets with flyers reading, The Shadowless Divine Thief—witness the phantom theft of your dreams.
Wait. Flyers?
"Wait just a moment!"
I shot to my feet and began rummaging through the drawers.
"Young Master Kang, what are you looking for?"
"What are you doing?"
"How about this?!"
What I pulled out was a novel manuscript covered in countless corrections.
"That's?! That's the novel I wrote!"
It was the novel Lim Hayeon had written back in Yichang.
"Hayeon unni wrote a novel?"
"N-No, no, no! Don't get up! Why did you pull that out?!"
As Jegal Hyang rose in curiosity, Lim Hayeon hastily and sheepishly hid the manuscript behind her.
"We finish it, and publish it."
"This?"
"It's a novel with a thief at its heart, isn't it? Why she robs the rich, why she gives to the poor. We publish a novel that tells the story of the Shadowless Divine Thief. It's nothing like the original, so it'll need heavy revision."
We'd have to rebuild it from the skeleton up, but the way a physician can write a physician's tale, it should come easier than expected.
"Couldn't that invite trouble?"
"Which is exactly why we publish it before the work begins. Even if it finds no readers at first—what happens once Miss Hayeon takes up her trade as a righteous thief?"
"...It would shoot to popularity in an instant."
"And should anyone cry foul, we call it a coincidence and stop printing. It's only serving as a flyer, after all. Well? What do you think?"
"What I wrote isn't a novel about the righteous thief Shadowless Divine Thief, so it would take a staggering amount of time?"
"I'll help from the first line to the last. It may take time, but it'll be more than enough at flyer quality. And if Daseogak simply pushes it, sales are guaranteed."
A promotional novel would carry the story of the Shadowless Divine Thief.
If people came to know her not merely as a righteous thief, but as a woman with a past and a purpose, the rumors would take wing and fly.
"Maybe it would work for you, but could I—someone writing a novel for the very first time—really manage it?"
"Publishing a novel has always been your dream, hasn't it, Miss Hayeon? No time like the present."
For Lim Hayeon too, a single-volume novel was not beyond reach. Especially since the promotion wouldn't rest on the bookstore alone—she would be doing it herself.
Lim Hayeon stared at me for a long while, as if asking whether I truly thought this wasn't an outrageous proposal.
Don't tell me she disliked it?
Before long, she lowered her gaze and shook her head.
"My wish was to write a novel so I could escape my life as a courtesan. Truthfully, my mind was on the offering rice more than the rite itself."
"And here is that very opportunity."
"You're the one making my dream come true."
Lim Hayeon came to me as though handling something fragile and dear, and brushed the dust from my shoulder.
"Miss Hayeon..."
"It's true that I want to write a novel. But that comes later, doesn't it? Someday, when everything is settled. I'll write one with my own strength."
Escaping her life as a runaway courtesan had been her dream far longer than writing ever was.
I gazed for a while into Lim Hayeon's blue eyes—eyes that looked upon something dearer to her than anything—lost in thought. Then I nodded.
If that was her wish, I could only honor it.
"If that's how Miss Hayeon feels, then so be it."
Setting my disappointment aside, I nodded.
"Thank you. Now go help Miss Jegal with the files."
"...I never said I was giving up on it entirely."
The promotion still had to happen.
Because I had another idea.
"What?"
Lim Hayeon's eyes went wide.
"What if, instead of Miss Hayeon writing and me assisting, I write the novel and Miss Hayeon assists me?"
What was impossible for Lim Hayeon was possible for me.
"You'd write a brand-new novel under the name Hopil? To write without smearing Hopil's name, dashing something off at flyer level would be poison, wouldn't it?"
Fair point.
If we had to build new backgrounds, settings, characters, and plots from scratch, it would be faster to simply start stealing. But I had another way.
"I'll write it as the next story of a novel I was already writing."
"Volume 4 of Dangga Pungun? But that one already has its next story..."
"Not Dangga Pungun."
I rose from my seat, walked to a corner of the office, and stopped in front of a tightly wrapped package.
It was still too early. And yet, someday, the time would come.
Like the lingering attachment left in one corner of my heart, the package had sat in a corner of the spacious office.
I slowly unwrapped the package that had never once been opened.
"Why are you unwrapping the package you told me never to open? You wouldn't even answer when I asked what it was. What on earth is it?"
"My lingering attachment."
"I'm sorry—what?"
Unable to contain their curiosity, the two women rose from their seats and came to me as I unwrapped the thing I could never let go of.
"Young Master Kang? What is that?"
What I held out to them was the hope I had found in this world.
A record of miserable failure—and proof that even in my hardest hour, I had risen onto my own two feet once more.
A lingering attachment kept in a corner of my heart. A story I had longed to publish, someday, when the time was right.
"I intend to write the next story of this book."
To challenge myself one more time, I showed them the title of the book.
"Tale of the Wind and Cloud Chivalric Hero?"