Closed-Door Seclusion - 4
"What on earth kind of book could this be?"
Even as Dan Seo-wol carried off the book her disciple's beloved had written, she found herself unable to believe what she'd heard only moments before.
"Please put in a good word for me with Author Hopil. — From your devoted reader, Dan Se-ak. It would be even better if he could manage just one more sentence!"
It had clearly been a heartfelt plea. Which was precisely why Dan Seo-wol couldn't bring herself to believe it. A book that could charm even the master of Salmak?
What kind of book could it possibly be?
"Number 5! Why do you keep changing your mind? Oh! Lady Dan Seo-wol! Back from your errand?"
When Dan Seo-wol opened the door, she found the two inside in the middle of yet another squabble.
"You're back?"
Her disciple greeted her without expression, but her eyes said she was relieved to finally be rid of the nuisance.
"What were you two doing?"
"Yukiko! Number 5 is being so stubborn!"
Seol-ja beat her chest and rushed to Dan Seo-wol's side.
"Stubborn, you say?"
"Yukiko! Number 5 promised to learn the kunoichi seduction arts I brought back from Dongyeong, but the moment she came out of seclusion, she suddenly refused!"
"It wasn't much help anyway."
"You barely learned a thing before it ended last time! Did Number 5 start building internal energy the very instant she learned martial arts?!"
"Yep."
"...This is why geniuses are insufferable!"
"Here, have a look at this book instead."
So it was some trivial matter after all. Having sized up the situation, Dan Seo-wol drew a book from the bundle she'd brought and held it out before the two of them.
"A book?"
"Nin-nin! What book is it? Dangga Pungun? A martial arts manual written by those poison-peddlers?"
Seol-ja was an assassin of Salmak, and the Tang Clan's poisons and hidden weapons were far more often troublesome enemies than dependable allies—so at the sight of the title she frowned and asked.
"This is..."
Cheon So-hee, on the other hand, stared at her master, struck speechless.
"That's right. The book your beloved wrote."
Dan Seo-wol smiled as she spoke to the disciple who had recognized it at a glance.
"A book oppa wrote...?"
"I asked around for news of your beloved, and this is what I was given."
"Oooooh! A book written by Number 5's beloved! Yukiko! I simply must know what's inside!"
At the news that it was written by Number 5's beloved, Seol-ja's scowl melted away in an instant, and she fussed over the book, turning it this way and that.
"I confess I'm curious myself. Just how remarkable must it be, that it can't even be found anywhere in Hubei Province?"
Why on earth would the Salmakju want a signed copy? Dan Seo-wol studied her disciple with a curious face, as if to ask whether she knew anything.
Cheon So-hee didn't know the book's contents in any detail either. But she knew exactly why it was popular.
"Whenever oppa started telling a story, people would swarm like bees."
It was a book oppa wrote. Of course it was destined to become famous. The cheeks of Cheon So-hee—usually so cold and still—puffed out with pride.
"So he had a gift for storytelling as a maedamja, and it carried over into his writing?"
This was the man who had made her disciple—the girl who'd seemed fated for neither love nor connection—declare that she would follow oppa even into death.
With nothing but a three-inch tongue, he must be skilled enough to leave bandits who came to rob him weeping as they added coin to his purse. Dan Seo-wol was convinced.
"Now I'm even more curious!"
"I want to read it."
"Here you are."
Dan Seo-wol held the book her disciple's beloved had written out to her.
"Dangga Pungun..."
Cheon So-hee accepted the book as though it were a treasure and held it up, murmuring the title written in neat, upright strokes.
"I hear it stars a protagonist from the Sichuan Tang Clan, and that it's the reason your oppa got dragged off to the Tang Clan in the first place."
"Why the Sichuan Tang Clan?"
It was this book that had gotten oppa hauled off to the Sichuan Tang Clan. But oppa wasn't even a member of the Tang Clan. Why would a Tang Clansman be the protagonist?
Oppa wasn't a martial artist either. She was the one who'd taught him the fundamentals. No matter how she turned it over, Cheon So-hee couldn't fathom why he'd written a Tang Clan hero.
"I don't know the particulars myself."
Neither master nor disciple could summon a plausible reason.
"Ah! Yukiko! I've had an epiphany!"
Seol-ja stared hard at the book, then thrust her index finger skyward, eyes snapping wide open.
"You know the reason?"
Only then did Cheon So-hee favor Seol-ja with a genuinely interested look—the first in hours. What reason could there possibly be? And how would Seol-ja of all people know it?
Emboldened by that rare show of interest, Seol-ja grinned triumphantly and unveiled her deduction.
"Fufufu! Number 5's beloved! Wasn't he living under one roof with a woman of the Tang Clan!"
"..."
"You said her beloved was no martial artist! Which means he must have owed everything to that Tang Clan woman's help! Nin-nin!"
Seol-ja wore the smug expression of a detective who has just cracked the case. Entirely blind to what was unfolding before her eyes.
"Yukiko."
"Lady Red Rakshasa? What's the matter? Hiiiiek! Killing intent! There's killing intent pouring out from somewhere!!!"
The murderous chill crawling up her nape sent Seol-ja leaping clear off the floor.
"That's right. Yoonho oppa. He was living with a woman..."
The source of the killing intent was, of course, Cheon So-hee. Her expression was hardening by the second.
Why had she forgotten?
From a corner of Cheon So-hee's memory, something she had deliberately refused to dwell on—out of worry for Kang Yoonho—was being dragged out by force.
Oppa was living with a woman. Living with a woman of the Tang Clan.
No. They were just friends, he'd said. But a man who'd been taught martial arts worthy of a novel was no ordinary friend. Just like oppa and her...
Deep in Cheon So-hee's chest, bubbles began to rise, one by one, from the long-calm sea of her killing intent.
"They're not just simple friends...?"
While she was stuck here.
Oppa was living under a roof with that woman.
"Nin-nin! Hiiiiek! I can see the character of the Heavenly Killing Star in her eyes!!! Ninjutsu! I must deploy Emergency Escape Technique Number One!"
Panicked, Seol-ja's hands flew through their hand seals. Watching the pair of them, Dan Seo-wol sighed softly and spoke.
"I hear your beloved has returned to Yichang—but the Tang Clan woman has not."
"They don't live together?"
The bubbles beneath the sea of killing intent all burst at once.
"Whatever happened within the Tang Clan is still being verified, but I'm told she lives alone now."
"I see. Good."
Cheon So-hee nodded as if nothing at all had happened.
A needless worry, that was all. She tried to settle back into her usual expressionless mask, but Seol-ja did not miss Number 5's subtle shift in expression.
"Ah! Number 5 is smiling!"
"I'm not smiling."
"Liar! That is one hundred percent the face of a woman who thought her man was cheating and then got relieved! You said you trusted your oppa! So you didn't trust him?!"
"...I trusted him."
She hadn't trusted oppa. Seol-ja's tone was pure teasing, but Cheon So-hee couldn't answer the sharp observation right away.
"A woman who jealously guards too hard is a woman who is hard to love!"
"Hard to love...?"
Hard to be loved by oppa? Cheon So-hee stared at Seol-ja, jaw hanging open.
"Fufufu. Your expression is priceless, Number 5! Which is why you must hurry and master the seduction arts of Dongyeong that will make you a woman worthy of love—"
"Enough fooling around. Are you taking it with you?"
Dan Seo-wol asked her disciple, who still cradled the book.
"Yes."
"Yukiko! Playtime is over! I want to read it too!"
"There's more where that came from."
Dan Seo-wol drew several more volumes of Dangga Pungun from her bundle.
"Nin-nin?! Weren't these books supposed to be impossible to get?"
At Seol-ja's question, Dan Seo-wol snorted as though the very idea were absurd.
"He offered me copies for my own enjoyment and more besides for spreading the word. What he wants is a collector's edition that not just anyone can own."
"Pardon? What does that mean?"
"Such a thing exists. Finish reading them, then we'll talk."
Dan Seo-wol dealt out the books to her disciple and her disciple's friend, then sent them each off to their own rooms.
A book written by Yoonho oppa.
Clutching Dangga Pungun to her chest like a treasure, Cheon So-hee retreated to her room.
"Hopil."
The barbarian's brush. Like a woman tracing her lover's name into his palm, Cheon So-hee followed each stroke with her fingertip, writing out her beloved's pen name, character by character.
Oppa had written under a pen name rather than his own name.
Cheon So-hee understood why without needing to ask. Because oppa was a Joseon man, same as her. Because she knew all too well what fate awaited those who put their own names forward in these lands.
She thought back to the days when Yoonho oppa had worked as a maedamja.
"How well can a barbarian spin a tale? He's a barbarian cur, nothing more."
"Sure, he's a barbarian maedamja! But shut your mouth and give him a listen first!"
"What could a barbarian cur possibly know?"
People who looked at him with contempt the moment they saw his black hair. A person's worth was never in their appearance—and yet the Central Plains crawled with people who thought otherwise.
There was one breed she found especially unforgivable.
"My, my. Would you look at that face. A maedamja, you say? Care to have a chat with me after the story?"
"Just a chat? I was rather hoping to mix in something more."
"Now hold on, who said you could—huh?!"
"Ack!"
Those gnats who dared chatter about oppa's face without knowing the first thing about his heart could never be forgiven. Letting oppa trade words with gnats like those even once was once too many.
She knocked them out cold before they could blink and hauled them off to the man who ran the fabric shop.
Why a man with martial arts like his ran a fabric shop, she never did learn, but he was quick on the uptake. He'd sigh—bringing me more of these again?—yet he always saw to them properly, so that no trouble ever came trailing after.
In any case. Oppa would laugh as though he'd long since grown used to the contempt of the Central Plains people, but at times a bitterness would cross his face—bitter enough that even she could taste it.
The pen name Hopil must surely have been a name oppa agonized over before choosing. Cheon So-hee gazed upon Kang Yoonho's pen name with eyes full of affection.
"Dangga Pungun."
Cheon So-hee murmured the book's title in a voice gone low and husky.
"Tang Hwa-rin..."
His business partner and friend, he'd said. A business partner, so of course she must have helped him write the book. Surely it meant nothing more than that. And yet, no matter how she turned it over, something about it sat strangely wrong with her.
Never knowing that the world called this feeling a woman's intuition, Cheon So-hee found herself wrapped in a strange, creeping unease.
In the end, she rose from her seat and went to stand before the mirror.
Other women faced their mirrors daily to paint their faces; Cheon So-hee had never given hers a second glance.
Today, for some reason, she studied the reflection staring back at her with unusual care.
"You said I was pretty."
Hers was still a young face, and yet the beauty in the mirror was of a rank that let one claim no lovelier woman existed in all eight provinces of Joseon.
And beneath that head rested a figure no one would ever believe belonged to a woman not yet twenty.
Assailed by a sense of crisis she had never once felt before, she found herself glaring into the mirror, forcibly smothering the anxiety rising in her chest.
Barely managing to calm her heart, Cheon So-hee opened Volume One of Dangga Pungun.
"Dang Jeong."
She had no habit of reading novels. Any hour spent hunting for joy between printed lines was an hour better spent crushing down the killing intent of the Heavenly Killing Star. But Dangga Pungun was a book Kang Yoonho had written.
Cheon So-hee gave herself over to the text completely, murmuring even the protagonist's name as she read.
So the protagonist fell for a woman called the Greatest Beauty of Sichuan, and now he hones himself day and night for her sake. How earnestly he trains. With such an utterly upright heart, he labors on, his eyes fixed on one woman alone.
That figure reminded her of someone.
"Yoonho oppa...?"
He was alike. The sight of a man striving with one woman alone in his heart.
Cheon So-hee found Kang Yoonho in Dang Jeong. Wasn't oppa also living with everything he had, crossing one brush with death after another—all for her sake?
Dang Jeong is oppa. The moment Cheon So-hee's thoughts arrived there, she stumbled upon a startling truth about the novel's heroine.
"The Greatest Beauty of Sichuan... is me?"
Wasn't she the one Yoonho oppa loved? Then of course the woman called the Greatest Beauty of Sichuan could be no one else.
Only now did Cheon So-hee understand.
Dangga Pungun was the love story of Yoonho oppa and herself. The instant the truth landed, Cheon So-hee plunged headlong into the novel, all sense of the world around her gone.
"My lady! My skills are humble, and I cannot promise you victory. But should the Lust Fiend wish to lay a hand upon you, he must first take my head!"
"It's the Seongga Manor story."
It really was oppa.
Oppa, who when she ran berserk at Seongga Manor had refused to give up on her and fought to save her. Turning those days over in her mind again, her heart ached—and the thought of Kang Yoonho made her chest tighten.
"Yoonho oppa..."
Dang Jeong was trying to protect the Greatest Beauty of Sichuan.
Dang Jeong was Yoonho. The Greatest Beauty of Sichuan was her. Before she knew it, Cheon So-hee was painting Kang Yoonho's face over Dang Jeong's, and her own face over the beauty's.
Yoonho oppa, protecting me?
Oppa, sword in hand, standing between her and harm. She had never once known such a thing, but the mere imagining made her heart turn over, soft and fluttering. Cheon So-hee's face grew redder and redder.
She could not tear her eyes from the book, not all the way to the final stretch.
"Young master... I humbly entrust my first night to your care."
Up until the bed scene, that is.
"Uh...?"
At a scene where the letters were printed black but the content glowed pink, Cheon So-hee slammed the book shut before she knew what she was doing.
It was far too explicit. To be sure, she knew in principle what men and women did together at night. But her knowledge had never progressed beyond the level of dry, mechanical instruction.
And so the bed scene of Dangga Pungun—a commercial novel engineered to set its readers' blood alight—could only land on her as a thunderbolt.
The w-wedding night.
Dang Jeong was Kang Yoonho. The Greatest Beauty of Sichuan was her. To Cheon So-hee, who had been reading in total immersion, the scene was nothing short of pure flusterment.
Her heart was pounding. One flick of the cover open, and there it would be: the wedding night of Yoonho oppa and herself.
Perhaps she ought not to look.
"I'm looking."
As a rule, only a monk of the highest attainment can overcome the temptation of a lewd scene.
Half-afraid someone might see, Cheon So-hee hunched over the book until it nearly touched her nose and began to read.
The scene in Dangga Pungun was brazenly explicit—a commercial set piece calculated to satisfy very particular tastes.
"A woman's chest is where a baby nurses... so it can be used for this, too..."
Nineteen years old. The Heavenly Killing Star's belated yet breakneck education in the affairs of the flesh.
Some scholar would surely beat his breast and cry that learning such things from erotic fiction was a warped education indeed—but as a rule, one's introduction to any art begins with the sort of warped that interests you. And if it was a warped education, so much the better for sticking.
Because Yoonho oppa wrote it.
A book steeped in Kang Yoonho's tastes.
A book brimming over with Kang Yoonho's tastes.
And Cheon So-hee's beloved was Kang Yoonho.
Which made it, in truth, an education tailored precisely for her.