Closed-Door Seclusion Training - 5
Stepping into a new world is an experience brimming with excitement.
Ngh... darling...
All the more so when that world is the stairway to adulthood.
Cheon Sohee could not hide her shock at the sight of a world awash in pink.
She had known, in a mechanical sort of way, what men and women did in bed together—but she had never known how, concretely, such things actually unfolded.
Even her master, Dan Seowol, had apparently never imagined her disciple would fall in love, for she had never once sat her down and explained.
Unable to tear her eyes from this new world, Cheon Sohee murmured in a voice heavy with meaning.
"So this is the wedding night."
It was not.
Dangga Pungun was a book built to fantastically distort the relations between men and women and set its readers' blood ablaze—and it was nothing if not stimulating.
Page after page of ways to please a man, passages drenched to the brim in fantasies of the bed—there was no way that amounted to a proper wedding night.
Someone might well have offered Cheon Sohee counsel, but even had they insisted it was nothing like the real thing, not a word of it would ever have reached her ears.
"Yunho oppa..."
Cheon Sohee was already picturing Dang Jeong with Kang Yunho's face, and Sichuan's Number One Beauty, Gu Sook-jeong, with her own.
Her lower belly tingled with a strange restlessness. Her face burned hot.
Thanks to the scenes of carnal love in Dangga Pungun, Cheon Sohee now knew with absolute certainty how children came into the world—and how a man and a woman pleasured each other in bed.
"I shall capture Saekma and come to beg your forgiveness."
Calming a heart that pounded for reasons she could not name, Cheon Sohee read on toward the final scene.
"My darling! Where have you gone? My darling!"
The parting of Dang Jeong and Sichuan's Number One Beauty—the very scene countless devoted readers of Dangga Pungun had lamented. And Cheon Sohee felt a flicker of déjà vu.
"It's just like when I said goodbye to oppa."
It was similar. The sudden word of parting, the promise to meet again. Even the aching reluctance of it. It was all so painfully similar.
Calling up her own heart-wrenching farewell, Cheon Sohee nodded with a sorrowful expression at the scene other readers had merely grieved over, and understood it completely.
They love each other—and still they must part. It can't be helped. Not when there are things they still must do.
Dang Jeong would return with the Erotic Fiend Saekma captured, and ask her to marry him.
Picturing Dang Jeong—with Kang Yunho's face—proposing to a Sichuan's Number One Beauty who wore her own face, Cheon Sohee felt her heart tickle with an odd, warm ache.
How would it end? Surely with Dang Jeong vowing to capture Saekma with everything he had, if only to make his way back to Gu Sook-jeong, Sichuan's Number One Beauty?
Trusting in Dang Jeong's resolve, Cheon Sohee turned the page.
The protagonist enters Hubei's finest pleasure house. There, a courtesan who has never once given her body to anyone—a woman who must be paid a fortune merely to summon—lies addicted to an aphrodisiac...
"Dang Jeong... with another woman...?"
One line was quite enough to betray her expectations.
The next day.
Though no one had called them to gather in Dan Seowol's room, the three of them assembled side by side at the very same hour. All three wore the bleary faces of the sleep-deprived, yet somewhere in their eyes a light was shining.
"Yukiko! It was so much fun!!! I didn't even sleep—I read the whole thing!"
"This one has never read a book like it either. Before I knew it, it was morning."
Dan Seowol nodded along with a smile. She had come expecting what one expects of a famous banquet—little worth eating—yet before she knew it, the moon had set and the birds were singing.
It was a first for her as well.
"And how was it for you, No. 5?"
Seolja asked with her usual easygoing smile, having noticed that Cheon Sohee's expression was somehow dark.
"...It was fun."
"Did the book displease you? Something about you seems less than satisfied."
Cheon Sohee stared at Dan Seowol's worried face for a long moment, then murmured in a voice tinged with disappointment.
"Dang Jeong. I thought he was Yunho oppa. But he wasn't Yunho oppa."
And I thought he'd end up with Gu Sook-jeong, Sichuan's Number One Beauty.
What is this courtesan even supposed to be? And who are the Two Flowers of Blue and Red? Why does he turn his eyes to another woman the very moment he promises to meet again?
He honed himself body and soul for the sake of one woman! Why does his heart waver just because someone at his side treats him gently? Du Eung-hyang is a problem too. Why is she wagging her tail at a man who already has a beloved?
Cheon Sohee had found it nearly impossible to smother her rage the night before. In the end, she had slipped out into the dead of night and sweated through a round of training just to calm her heart.
Dang Jeong was not Yunho oppa. He resembled him, yes—but he was, in the end, a separate person. Only after forcing herself to admit as much could Cheon Sohee return and turn to the next chapter.
"Dear me. It seems she immersed herself a little too deeply."
Dan Seowol saw straight through to her disciple's inner thoughts at once.
A girl who had never taken up novels as a hobby. Told the book was her oppa's, she must have pictured the protagonist with oppa's face. And then the protagonist had gone and courted one woman after another. The shock must have been considerable.
She hid a smile at her disciple's entertaining reaction.
"Hohoho! No. 5! Did you think of your beloved while reading about Dang Jeong? Dang Jeong certainly was dashing!"
"Yunho oppa is more dashing than Dang Jeong."
The answer came without a shred of hesitation.
"Uuuugh! Yukiko! No. 5 is too dazzling! Poor Yukiko, who does not yet know the dashing coolness of love!"
Seolja shielded her face with both arms and peered at Cheon Sohee through scrunched eyes, as one stares into the sun.
"Truly a remarkable novel. I could hardly believe it was written by a Joseon man who knows nothing of the murim. It had my palms sweating."
Dan Seowol was not praising the book because her disciple's beloved had written it. She was, quite sincerely, in awe of Dangga Pungun.
"Mm. Because he's oppa."
At her master's praise of her beloved, the corners of Cheon Sohee's lips curled up ever so slightly.
"Yukiko feels exactly the same! Dang Jeong was especially cool! I think I might fall for Dang Jeong!"
"...Don't."
"Ah! No. 5! Are you keeping me in check right now just because he resembles your beloved?! A grown-up's jealousy! Yukiko has never been on the receiving end before!"
"..."
Ordinarily, she was a girl who hardly reacted to anything Seolja said. But the moment talk turned to her beloved, even Seolja's chatter could draw her out.
Having realized this, Seolja kept the conversation alive by weaving Dangga Pungun together with the Heavenly Killing Star's beloved.
Dan Seowol, too, welcomed it as a fresh amusement in the tedium of Salmak, and played along with the two girls' rhythm.
"But why on earth does Dang Jeong abandon the woman he loves and leave?! Yukiko cannot understand it!"
"This one was thinking he might at least have brought the Two Flowers of Blue and Red along. They would have strengthened his hand."
"Yukiko! I'm so curious why the author wrote it this way!"
Why on earth did he abandon the woman and go? Wouldn't it have been enough to simply be happy? When Dan Seowol and Seolja turned to Cheon Sohee with frustrated faces, she produced an unexpected answer.
"Because he left me too."
"Huh?"
"It's all right. Because we'll meet again someday. Definitely. We will meet again."
Cheon Sohee answered with steady, unyielding eyes. Dang Jeong was not oppa. But Dangga Pungun held oppa within it. Perhaps oppa wanted to write a story where, even if a novel forced two people apart, they always, always found their way back to each other.
As though he had promised her a reunion.
As though he meant to keep the vow he had once made to save her.
Cheon Sohee's eyes brimmed with affection for her beloved, and with something tender and aching besides.
"..."
"It seems my disciple read it most movingly."
Dan Seowol knew her disciple's circumstances, and so simply nodded.
"He isn't oppa. But it felt like looking at oppa."
"Uuuu... For a man as cool as Dang Jeong to be No. 5's beloved! Yukiko! I'm so jealous I could cry!"
The three of them showed no sign of running out of things to say about Dangga Pungun.
"Yukiko! Those love scenes! They were so steamy!"
Racy talk was, by tradition, best saved for after dark. With dinner finished and night fallen, Seolja at last brought up the topic she had deliberately been holding back.
"This one also found it a bit... s-suggestive."
Dan Seowol agreed, her gaze sliding off to the side. She had expected a book of murim tales—she had not imagined it would plunge into explicit territory in an instant.
She stole a glance at her disciple, so hopelessly oblivious to the affairs of men and women.
Had it been too much for her? Surely she must have been embarrassed? She watched with concern—but the girl's expression was, if anything, perfectly composed.
"It was very educational."
"What?!"
"Huh?!"
"Now I know what oppa likes."
Her disciple's face had flushed a noticeable red. Dan Seowol was at a loss. Surely not. Had she studied the ways of men and women... from Dangga Pungun?
This was serious. Dan Seowol opened her mouth, resolved as a master to finish the education her disciple had never received.
"Reality and fiction are different things. What appears in those pages is a story spun for the pleasure of the reader."
"That's right! No. 5! You mustn't get the wrong idea! That is false common sense! Think about it! Th-there's no way that's possible with a chest, is there?!"
Seolja backed her up, her own face flushed with excitement.
"It isn't possible?"
Cheon Sohee tilted her head, blinking, and turned to Seolja.
"Of course it's impossible... Huh?!"
Seolja had moved to answer at once—and found herself forced to stop.
For her eyes had filled, brim to brim, with a sight that would have been worthy of the title Joseon's Number One Breasts.
"I-it isn't possible?"
Why on earth does Lady Dan Seowol have to be curious about this too? As Seolja stared at the Red Rakshasa asking in a trembling voice, she felt her breath stop short.
For Dan Seowol, too, was endowed with something that lost nothing in comparison to her disciple.
Crushed under an overwhelming sense of defeat and helplessness, Seolja covered her own precious region and bit down hard on her lip.
"Ugh! Master and disciple both, carrying the impossible—and as a matched pair, no less..."
A voice thick with defeat slipped out.
"What was that you said?"
"Huh?! Yukiko! For a moment there, my Clear Mirror, Still Water ninjutsu nearly shattered!"
Seolja replied, barely keeping her expression under control.
"Yukiko. If you must speak to my disciple, teach her proper common sense. Telling her the possible is impossible only deepens her confusion, does it not?"
No, I mean—most of it is impossible! Seolja's expression nearly cracked all over again at Dan Seowol's words.
Seolja, for no good reason, glanced down at her own particular region—still steeped in defeat—and declared with forced cheer.
"Yukiko! I will pull myself together! There is no need to despair! It would be strange if it were possible!"
Through sheer self-suggestion, Seolja barely kept her crumbling pride intact. But Cheon Sohee's curiosity had yet to be resolved.
"If it's possible, then it's fine to do it, isn't it?"
"Tch..."
Seolja found it very hard to deny.
"Yukiko! My mind is starting to go! I think I'm sleepy!"
"I'm going to bed."
"No. 5! Let's go together!"
As the night deepened, Dan Seowol sent her disciple and Seolja back to their rooms.
"Who knew chattering over a novel could be such a delight."
The Salmak Lord would surely throw a fit if he could see her now.
He had made a name for himself for her disciple's sake—so perhaps his vow to save the Heavenly Killing Star from her fate had been no empty boast after all. In her disciple's beloved, Dan Seowol truly could see hope.
"Lady Red Rakshasa. We have brought the news you spoke of."
The moment the girls were gone, one of Salmak's killers presented a single sheet of paper.
"Good. Hand it over."
There was no need to ask what news it carried. She had asked after only one thing.
Kang Yunho would surely be perfectly fine. Doing well. Living diligently, no doubt. If he had included even a single word for her disciple, the girl would throw herself all the harder into her training.
Dan Seowol unfolded the news of Kang Yunho that had flown in from Yichang.
"This is bad..."
Kang Yunho. Currently cohabiting with a woman.
Dan Seowol could not contain her bewilderment at the news within.