Closed-Door Seclusion Training - 3
"Waaah... No. 5, that's just too mean!"
"No, it isn't." Cheon So-hee said flatly to Seol-ja, who wore an aggrieved expression.
Cream-sauce tteokbokki, of all things. This had to be much the same feeling Yoon-ho oppa had whenever he eyed the inn's more exotic dishes and muttered that this or that wasn't authentic food. Cheon So-hee had stopped unleashing her fury at Seol-ja, but the dissatisfaction itself refused to be packed away.
"Yukiko! Do you have any idea how much Yukiko has suffered on No. 5's account?!"
At Cheon So-hee's frosty response, Seol-ja looked back at her as if to say, how cruel.
"Because of me?"
"Yukiko took it upon herself to carry out every single mission that was meant for No. 5!"
"My missions?"
Why on earth would Seol-ja do her missions? Unable to make head or tail of it, Cheon So-hee tilted her head.
"It's true. Seol-j... hm?"
The Red Rakshasa, Dan Seo-wol, had been about to elaborate when a peculiar wave of hostility made her turn her head.
"Because I am No. 6! Yu. Ki. Ko! Easy to remember, easy to pronounce!"
And there, where Seo-wol's gaze had landed, stood Seol-ja — smiling sweetly while billowing an aura of pure menace.
Was the name Seol-ja truly so repugnant to her? It was only a little— no, quite a lot— tacky. Seo-wol gave her a conceding nod.
"Fine. Yukiko took care of every mission that was to have gone to you."
"Yukiko does not lie! Yukiko finished them all ahead of time so that No. 5 wouldn't be worn out the moment she stepped out of the training cave. And after all that, you're still angry?!"
Seol-ja announced this to Cheon So-hee, triumphant. She had volunteered in the first place, so bragging had never been the point — she only hoped So-hee might let the anger go and accept it in good grace. That was the full extent of Seol-ja's ambition as she laid out the truth.
But Cheon So-hee's reaction was not what Seol-ja had expected.
"...Thank you."
Cheon So-hee bowed her head to Seol-ja.
"...?"
"What?"
Seol-ja's face was steadily draining toward ash-white.
"Red Rakshasa... could it be that Yukiko is already dead? Did she pass on without ever knowing love, and become a spirit of love itself?"
"Astonishingly, she is still among the living."
Dan Seo-wol, wearing an odd little smile, played along with Seol-ja's tune.
"Wha—! Then No. 5 truly just thanked me?!"
"..."
Watching Seol-ja light up like a puppy wagging its tail, Cheon So-hee realized she had made some kind of mistake.
"Fufufu! No take-backs! Yukiko's memory is excellent. No. 5 clearly said she was so grateful to Yukiko for taking over her missions that it embarrassed her!"
Cheon So-hee started to correct her, then promptly gave up. This was a tiresome creature who answered every word with a dozen more. Unless she wanted to kick up a fuss for nothing, she was better off nodding along and simply eating. Cheon So-hee raised her chopsticks and picked up a piece of tteokbokki.
The thick, cloying taste of cream. Still not the flavor she wanted. Hoping to change the tune on her tongue, she reached for a piece of fried food — then realized something was missing.
"The tteokbokki sauce..."
No one dips crispy fried batter into cream sauce. Cheon So-hee muttered in a faintly deflated voice.
"Just dip it in soy sauce! This, too, is a delicacy!"
Cheon So-hee eyed the little dish of soy sauce Seol-ja hastily pushed toward her, then half-heartedly dipped a piece and took a bite. It was tasty, certainly — and yet somehow lacking.
"I'm less grateful now."
It was an uncharacteristically pouty voice for Cheon So-hee.
"Less grateful over a mere tteokbokki? How heartless can you be, No. 5? Waaah."
Seol-ja simply didn't understand. By time-honored law, fried food exists to be tossed in tteokbokki sauce. Cheon So-hee resolved to teach her the true taste of tteok-twi-sun the next chance she got.
"There's plenty of other food, so eat up, you two."
Watching her disciple and her disciple's friend with fond eyes, Dan Seo-wol soon joined the meal herself.
"No. 5, you ate rather well for someone who was furious, no?"
The meal over, Seol-ja remarked, eyeing the emptied dishes with a look of mild disbelief.
"...It wasn't bad."
True tteokbokki demanded gochujang, the fiery red chili paste — but cream sauce had its merits as an occasional novelty. Cheon So-hee answered with a prim expression, wiping the corner of her mouth.
"Fufufu! There, you see? Next time, you must challenge soup rice with Yukiko!"
"I'll pass."
The reply was instantaneous.
"You have no eye for fine cuisine! With tonkatsu and kkakdugi radish kimchi on the side, it's far tastier than you'd think!"
"Next time, rose tteokbokki. Non-negotiable."
A novelty was only ever a novelty. The one true tteokbokki was, and would always be, rose tteokbokki. Cheon So-hee declared this while feeling the tteokbokki-shaped void still unfilled in her stomach.
"Yukiko keeps telling you, Yukiko cannot handle spicy food! Oh! Red Rakshasa, where are you going?"
Cheon So-hee and Seol-ja turned toward Dan Seo-wol as she rose from her seat.
"Now that the feast is done, I suppose I must go see to the aftermath of earlier events."
The Heavenly Killing Star had emerged from her closed-door seclusion, and assassins had been mobilized on top of that. Someone had to report on the day's events.
"Is it because of me?"
At the worry she could feel behind her expressionless disciple's gaze, a smile slipped out of Dan Seo-wol before she could stop it. So the child could express her feelings after all. She seemed more marvelous the longer Seo-wol watched her.
"All I'll be doing is looking at the faces of a pack of gloomy wretches. Is there anything else you need? If there's something you want, speak now and I'll raise it while I'm there."
"Yoon-ho oppa."
"Wha—! How bold, No. 5! At last, a kidnapping?! Are you finally ascending the stairs of adulthood?! Grant Yukiko permission to spectate!"
"Kidnapping might prove difficult."
Dan Seo-wol shook her head at her disciple's audacious request.
"...News, or letters. I want to receive them again."
"Very well. I'll see to it while I'm there."
"Red Rakshasa! The Heavenly Killing Star has gone over a year without a single killing and kept her sanity intact? What on earth is going on?"
On the matter of the Heavenly Killing Star's seclusion, the Red Rakshasa Dan Seo-wol stood before the executives of Salmak.
"My disciple has attained a breakthrough."
She delivered it in a level tone, but the impact of that single sentence was considerable.
"Closed-door training managed that?"
"So the Asura Life-Seizing Skill is everything they say..."
"Still — the Heavenly Killing Star! The Heavenly Killing Star!"
"If you're so curious, I would prefer you ask me rather than cluck amongst yourselves."
At the irritation lacing Seo-wol's voice, the assembly went still in an instant. It was an attitude that could fairly be called insolent, yet not one of them dared point that out to Dan Seo-wol.
The Red Rakshasa, Dan Seo-wol — a beauty whose looks were young enough, late twenties at a glance, that she and her disciple Cheon So-hee might have passed for sisters with only a few years between them. And yet there was no one in Salmak who could afford to take her lightly. If she ever truly unleashed her full strength, she was a master whose name rang out even in the unorthodox paths — renowned enough that she could rightly scream at Salmak's executives that these assassin nobodies didn't know their place. The only reason she was strangling her temper was that the Red Rakshasa was, for the moment, a member of Salmak.
"Red Rakshasa. So the Heavenly Killing Star has gained complete control of her killing intent, then?"
"She has only found the path. She says she cannot control it completely. But between one who has found the path and one who has not lies a gulf of difference."
The child did not exaggerate her own achievements. And that child had said she had found the path against the Heavenly Killing Star itself. Even if all she had found was a direction, it was a tremendous result.
"Then we could deploy her on missions right away..."
"I would prefer she take no assassination missions for the time being."
The master had resolved to stand firm for the disciple who had only barely found her path.
"What sort of nonsense is that!"
"She has already neglected her duties for a year and a half!"
The executives' outcry burst forth.
"She has only just barely found the path. There is no need to muddy the road she walks."
She could kill if it came to that. But having found the path, the first order of business was gauging how far that path might lead. Dan Seo-wol rejected the executives' proposal without ceremony.
"The Heavenly Killing Star is an assassin of Salmak all the same."
"She is my last disciple."
"..."
Before the Red Rakshasa's smoldering eyes, the executives of Salmak could produce not a word.
"The debt I owed Salmak was repaid long ago — and that price included the worth of my disciples' lives."
The Red Rakshasa Dan Seo-wol had already lost disciple after disciple. Every one of them had withered on Salmak's missions before their talent could ever bloom. Cheon So-hee was the last disciple the Red Rakshasa had ever taken. In Seo-wol's eyes as she faced the executives, sorrow and fury were tangled together.
"And yet..."
"You are the ones who stopped me when I tried to leave. You handed me full authority over a child no one else could handle, shoving her onto my back — take her, please — even as I refused time and again. And now you come whining otherwise?"
"Are you saying you intend to defy Salmak's orders?"
"I won't hear it! The reason that child carries out Salmak's missions is to keep the Heavenly Killing Star in check — not because she is Salmak's assassin."
"Red Rakshasa...!"
Several of the executives kicked back their seats and surged to their feet. The mood was primed for a brawl at the smallest spark. Dan Seo-wol had no intention of yielding an inch for her disciple's sake.
The atmosphere stood one spark from open bloodshed, and the tension climbed higher still—
"That will be quite enough."
At one man's entrance, everything fell silent in a heartbeat.
"Salmakju?"
Dan Seo-wol and the executives could only wear startled expressions at the Salmakju's abrupt appearance.
"Heh heh. It seems the Red Rakshasa was in quite a temper. I gave them all a stern dressing-down and sent them packing, so don't let it trouble you."
The Salmakju said this with a smile to Dan Seo-wol, who had followed him into his office wearing a face like stone.
"Salmakju."
"'Salmakju,' she says. How dry and dreary. Whatever became of the little Seo-wol who was once so sweet and affectionate to her dear older brother?"
The Salmakju, Dan Se-ak, murmured in mock hurt as he poured strong liquor from a small bottle and took a slow sip.
"I will take my leave."
Making it plain she had no appetite for further conversation, Seo-wol moved to turn on her heel at once.
"There's no need to take to heart whatever the old fossils said this time."
Dan Se-ak — elder brother of a sibling pair with more history than either cared to tell, and master of Salmak — chuckled wryly and soothed his younger sister.
"No. 5 is my disciple."
"And yet there was a time you swore you'd never give anyone your heart."
"Salmakju...!"
"Honestly, I keep telling you — go find a good man and marry, like I said ages ago. You tore around like a naked thunderbolt raising hell in your youth, and now that you're older, maternal love sprouts up out of nowhere... Whoa there!"
Dan Se-ak tilted his head just slightly, and the dagger hurtling at his face sailed past.
"One more word, and 'dear older brother' and 'the one who saved my life' cease to exist."
"Yes, yes. Understood. In any case, so long as you don't cause an incident here at the main branch, I couldn't care less."
"If the Salmakju says so, I will believe it."
Only then did Seo-wol reply, letting out a small sigh.
"Those old fossils are the problem, like I keep saying. How much longer do they intend to cling to the old ways of raising recruits? We're already running short of hands, yet they insist on preserving the grand tradition of sending the kids off to die left and right. Is it any wonder we end up shorthanded? That's why they're forced into such absurd sophistry."
Dan Se-ak began unloading his grievances about Salmak onto his sister.
"..."
"The field posts got their turnover early on, so their heads are still nice and supple. But the old guard are so glued to their seats they won't think of leaving, let alone changing. Their minds have petrified, and their stubbornness is beyond bearing. My insolent little sister, at least, is still cute in my eyes. The old bastards, I'd sooner wring their necks."
The strife between the comparatively young Salmakju and his executives. Out in the world, the mere name of Salmakju made knees quake in terror — but he, too, bore heavy burdens as head of the organization.
"If there is nothing more to say, I will take my leave."
"Hold on. There's something for you — take it."
As Seo-wol made to rise, the Salmakju drew something out of a drawer.
"And this is?"
What the Salmakju held out was the last thing she had expected.
"Dangga Pungun — the book you said you couldn't get your hands on because not a copy was left in all Hubei Province."
"How did you get this?"
Dan Seo-wol knew the title of this book all too well. Naturally so. It was written by her disciple's beloved. Why on earth was it in the Salmakju's hands? Concealing her bewilderment, the Red Rakshasa asked him.
"I've given orders that news of the Heavenly Killing Star's beloved is to be brought in separately. And I'll see word passed to the branch: should any letters addressed to the Heavenly Killing Star arrive, they are to be allowed through freely, with no limit on their length."
"..."
The message she had asked the branch chief to relay mere moments ago had already found its way to the Salmakju's ears. Countless thoughts flashed through the Red Rakshasa's mind.
How much does he know? There is no way he knows the truth of the Defier of Destiny. Does he know what this book truly is? Does he even know who wrote it? Why on earth is he holding it out?
Seo-wol's expression hardened by degrees.
"In return for the favor, I have a message for No. 5. Will you deliver it?"
Dan Se-ak said this to Seo-wol with a sly, crooked grin.
"And that would be."
The Red Rakshasa Dan Seo-wol felt as though her guard had been pierced.
So he had been angling for something after all. Find the target's weakness, then take what you want. You never see death coming until the blade is already at your throat. Truly the craft of a man fit to lead Salmak — the syndicate said to spare neither blood nor tears.
What on earth could he want from her disciple? Assassination missions, after all? Or some mission that required putting the Heavenly Killing Star to use?
Seo-wol stared, face taut, at her own flesh and blood — the man who had claimed the master's seat of Salmak with countless blood soaked into that crooked smile of his. The master of Salmak approached her slowly, smiling. Then, wary of listening ears, he leaned in until his lips nearly brushed her ear, and quietly made his wishes known.
"Sometime later... could you ask him to send an autographed copy of Author Hopil's work along as well?"