Declaration - 5
"You are telling me to give up my life as Hopil."
He was telling me to quit being a writer? From penniless beggar to manager of Daseogak — did he have any idea how I had climbed to this seat? What kind of bolt-from-the-blue nonsense was this?
"I know your way with words well enough, but surely the more important thing must come first. If you are to become my heir, the lessons you must take will be far more than one or two."
"Elder. The only reason I can stand in this seat at all is because I made my name as a writer."
"Had your talent been nothing more than putting words to paper, I would never have granted you the chance in the first place," the Mangeum Lord said flatly.
"Elder!"
"I am not discounting your gift for writing. I am telling you there is a proper order to things. Write when you are old, and enjoy it as a pastime."
"A pastime, you say?"
"I am fond of gardening myself. In skill, few in all Wuhan could stand beside me. But has gardening ever earned me a single coin? Inherit the Mangeum Money Market in full, and when leisure finds you someday, you may enjoy your writing as a hobby."
He would hand me the helm of a great enterprise — so long as I kept my writing for later, as a hobby.
To anyone else, it would have been an intoxicating offer. Give up the pen and nothing more, and become heir to the finest money market in Hubei Province. So long as no one asked at Daseogak, every last person would say to accept on the spot.
But.
My goal was never to become master of the Mangeum Money Market.
I was a Defier of Destiny. How many times had I sent the women I loved away, all because I was not enough? I had to raise my fame. I had to save Sohee from her fate. I wanted to see Hwarin even a single day sooner. And if ever I had to call on another heroine for help, I could not afford to be found wanting.
To the Mangeum Lord, money is the goal. To me, money is only the means.
His proposal was not a bad one. It was, if anything, an absurd privilege. But between us stood a difference of perspective that could never be bridged. The Mangeum Lord wanted me to succeed him as heir and carry the Money Market forward. I wanted to make money and become famous through my writing.
I had already seen how the world received my novels. All that remained was to earn the money and raise Daseogaks in every corner of the Central Plains — a land so vast that a single walled city was larger than the whole of the Korean peninsula.
So what was I to do? There was, of course, the simple path of accepting outright. If I gave up writing for the sake of my own comfort, everything would dissolve into foam. How many years would the heir's lessons demand? Even once those lessons ended, the actual inheritance might still lie far in the future. It might even be fine to pass over the help of women who might yet prove true heroines — who knew, if I threw myself headlong into the heir's lessons, Hwarin might one day come knocking at my door.
But.
I would lose my chance to save Sohee.
The Heavenly Killing Star. A destiny fixed by the stars themselves. Sohee did not have much time left. Before she descended into madness at the end — before the woman who agonized over her own destiny reached her catastrophe — I was going to save Sohee, whatever it took.
As master of the Mangeum Money Market, I could spread my novels far and wide. But if I accepted right now, I would never put pen to paper again.
It was an offer too delicate to refuse outright, yet too costly to accept blindly. So what was I to do? Simple. I would persuade the Mangeum Lord. After all, as the man himself had said, writing was hardly my only talent. And by the oldest rule of changing employers, until the contract is signed, the one being courted holds all the leverage. Since the offer had come to me, it was only right to shape it into an emperor's contract — not a slave's.
So how was I to persuade him? The clue had been given. I had long since finished putting my thoughts in order.
"I have no wish to live my life on a path laid down by another man's will."
I would begin by shaking him.
"You have no thought of living on a path laid down by another man's will?" Zhang Noya frowned as he looked at me.
"I am grateful for Zhang Noya's kindness. But I have no desire to run blindly down a road someone else has built."
I straightened my back, sat in perfect formal posture, and spoke with my fists clenched tight. Begin with the audacity of youth. The greatest difference between the Mangeum Lord and me was, in the end, our age — so that was where I would begin. He would turn it over in his mind: anyone could see this young man had no reason to refuse, so why refuse? And the reason would amount to nothing more than not wanting to live by another's will. The recklessness of youth. In the Mangeum Lord's eyes I would become a green whelp of a boy. He would not fail to grasp why I had said it — because I was young. But he would find me foolish. Foolish because I was young. And then he would believe he could talk me around to his way of thinking.
"There are men out there who would kill for a seat like this and never get their hands on it!"
As the elder of the two, he bellowed at the young whelp trying to stray from the road laid out for him. Just as I had expected. Here I must not say once more, No — I will walk my own path. I want to write. Raising a wall of opposition for the sake of argument at a moment like this would be the mark of an amateur. What I needed to say was something else entirely.
"Elder, I was not born an orphan. In my childhood, I lived in considerable comfort."
Time to bend the line of confrontation — I would not meet him head-on. Turning my gaze to the window, I spoke.
"I had already guessed as much. Those abilities of yours were never the kind a man picks up from the very bottom of the world."
I stared out the window with a desolate look, then raised a hand to my chest as though the ache had stolen over me unawares. I was playing the part of a man who carried a grief no number of years could wear away.
"The day I laid my parents to rest in my heart and was left alone in this world, a thought came to me. When I die — who will lay me to rest in theirs?"
I murmured the words with a lonely expression.
"..."
The Mangeum Lord stared back at me, eyes gone wide, as though the words had been struck from his mouth.
An excellent reaction. Married daughters belonged to another house anyway. To the Mangeum Lord, losing his only son could only have meant losing the one person who would have carried him in his heart. So I drove straight into that wound. I laid a story beneath the audacity of youth. The Mangeum Lord was a man who had lost his one and only son — and I was building a bridge of sympathy between us.
"One need only beget children and raise up an heir. That is the duty of the one left behind."
"I do not wish to live merely to lay someone's name to rest in my heart. I want to walk my own road."
I shook my head, slowly and carefully. You took me in because you had no successor, Elder — to carry on the name of Zhang Noya. And this young man has no wish to walk the path laid at his feet. Now I raised the true wall of opposition — with the story already set in place.
"Is your road, then, to be hunted through the streets by marketplace rabble, scraping past death's door time and again?!"
At last, the Mangeum Lord's fury broke loose.
"I have walked my own road — and left my own people behind me."
"...!"
"The Joseon folk who once doubted me now trust and follow me, calling me Sect Master this, Sect Master that. Marketplace rabble, you said? Those very people are my friends now. There is even one who trusts and follows me like a grandmother."
Commerce, in the end, is the people you leave behind. Throwing his own favorite maxim back at him, I burrowed deeper into his heart. My apologies to the Gimun Hyangju — but so long as I never called her grandmother to her face, no harm done. Right?
"So you would walk your own path and leave people behind you? That much you could do just as well as my heir."
A fair point. But I shook my head and brought out the heart of the matter — the reason I could never, under any circumstances, give up writing.
"I want to leave behind a name."
"A name?"
"Even when the years have passed, the dynasty has changed, and the world has been turned on its head — I want these three syllables of my name to remain in the hearts of all."
I would never give up writing. What he had taken for the foolishness of youth, I transformed into audacity with a story behind it.
"So you are saying you would throw away the heir's seat for the sake of your writing?"
"No. I will take it."
"You will?"
To the bewildered Mangeum Lord, I went on, my voice steeped in respect.
"You cannot understand my heart just yet. However many times I tell you I wish to write, you will not be persuaded. So I shall prove it before your grandchildren."
"Prove it, you say?"
"I will prove myself worthy to stand as the Mangeum Lord's successor. Not some interchangeable man who does whatever you bid, but your one and only heir — that is what I will show you. So when that day comes, I ask you to look upon me. Upon the man I am."
I, too, have lost someone precious. The Elder, in the twilight of his years, had only just now found an heir to carry him in his heart. But I wanted countless hearts to carry me in theirs — because my future still lay wide open before me. See me, and understand me. Not as founder and heir, one above and one below — but face to face.
"Hoh."
An admiring sigh spilled from the Mangeum Lord's lips.
"If you will accept my terms — then I, in turn, will accept your proposal."
For the day will come when I carry on your name. Accept my offer. Thus I laid down my proposal, wrapped in all the audacity of youth.
"Mangeum Lord, Young Master Kang has taken his leave."
"......So he landed a blow on me." The Mangeum Lord wore an odd expression as he spoke — half a smile, half something close to tears.
"That is simply what youth is, I suppose. How could a man ever achieve any great ambition without a single shred of daring and drive?"
The Chief Steward, who had overheard the entire exchange from beyond the door, gave a laugh of grudging admiration as he said this.
"In my youth, the ambition I nursed was this Mangeum Money Market. For that Baek rascal, it was Baek Family Manor."
Recalling the young man who claimed there was something more important than everything he had built in his lifetime, the Mangeum Lord gave a faintly hollow laugh.
"Is Young Master Kang not to your liking, then?"
"No. I find myself envying that Baek rascal, who went on ahead of me."
"I beg your pardon?"
"When I meet that Baek rascal later, I had best brace myself for a sound thrashing."
"My Lord, if you do that......?"
"Summon the girls. I must prepare the occasion."
On the Mangeum Lord's face, as the Chief Steward beheld it, hung a smile of thorough satisfaction.