The Second Test - 5
"Lure him in with a business, you say?"
I nodded at Jeon Gilsan's words.
"Yeah. Word is, a good few years before he borrowed that money, the Three-Eyed Sword had been going around telling everyone he planned to retire and go into business. Mangeum Jeonjang only lent him the money because they rated his reputation and his resolve so highly."
I said this while waving the stack of documents I'd compiled on the Three-Eyed Sword.
"I have heard that wanderers sometimes retire and go into trade, now that you mention it."
"Living off the blade is harder than it looks. And the man's past forty—it's about time he started dreaming of a second life."
Like a professional athlete beginning to eye retirement.
How much longer could a man live by the sword? The bodyguard bureau surely didn't treat him the way it used to. Why not try living a new life while he was at it?
That was how his gaze had drifted, little by little, toward a trade he'd never once cared about.
"And a man like that runs off with the money?"
"If he'd truly resolved to retire, it would've been worth a try. Wherever the Three-Eyed Sword flees, the moment word spreads of a black-haired, gray-eyed wanderer turning up, Mangeum's debt collectors will come running. But change his name, reinvent himself as a merchant, and tracking him down becomes devilishly hard."
"Clever..."
"The sum he borrowed is enormous, but it isn't enough to idle away the rest of his life. The man took up the sword swearing that from his days in Musuchon he'd never once dreamed of living off land rent—so farming's out of the question. Which leaves what?"
"Business, then."
To deceive a man and slip past him, you must first take his measure.
Best of all is to uncover what he desires. Desire can make a fool of even the wisest of men.
"I may not be able to pry the wolf's jaws open myself, but I can make the wolf spit the prize out on its own."
Wave the thing it hungers for most right under its nose. Set it moving according to my design.
Even a wanderer with a name known across all Hubei Province can be made to sit up like a puppy begging for treats.
I had shut the wolf inside my cage.
Unaware that it might be bait of my making, the wolf had spent the past several days happily eating from my hand.
"Speaking of which, I hear you're running quite the sizable business these days?"
A few days later, once I'd given him ample time to digest the bait, the words out of the Three-Eyed Sword's mouth were precisely as predicted.
"Haha. A sizable business? I'm simply working hard to keep food on the table."
I gave an awkward laugh and waved a hand in modest dismissal.
"Doesn't sound that way from what I've heard?"
The Three-Eyed Sword pressed me as though he'd come knowing everything—though for all he knew, I might well have told him everything myself.
"Too small yet to be called big, so 'a peculiar business' would be the honest description."
"A peculiar business?"
"Would you happen to be interested, brother?"
With an easy smile, in a way that could offend no one, I struck straight to the vitals.
"No, it's not that I'm especially interested in the business itself. I only wondered what my little brother has been about, that's all."
Caught at an unexpected moment, the wolf stammered out his excuses—never noticing that his fluster had let his true heart slip loose.
"How would you like to come and see it for yourself?"
I asked with a warm, good-natured face, as though utterly indifferent to how he might answer.
"See it?"
"If my respected brother is curious, how could I simply let it pass? If you have the time, I would be glad to show you around."
I hadn't planned any such thing. But since you're the one who wants to look.
I guided the true heart he'd let slip, naturally and smoothly, toward exactly the direction I wanted.
"You seem busy, though. Are you certain it's no trouble?"
Jo Cheol couldn't hide that he wanted to see, yet he searched my face as if he felt oddly guilty for it.
"Time to spare for you, brother? I have all the time in the world."
"Heh... If my little brother insists, then I'll swallow my embarrassment and have that look."
Of course it's no trouble. Why else would I have stowed you in a room at an inn I run myself?
Playing the man with no ulterior motive whatsoever. Playing the younger brother who gladly grants his hometown elder's request—that was how I meant to introduce the business, smooth as silk.
"These fellows are the very foundation of my business."
I had to land the investment. I had to stoke the greed of a man who wanted to run a business of his own. And how does one do that?
"Pigeons? No—carrier pigeons, is it."
All that remained was to show him a business worth investing in.
Make it gleam the way a jade battle platform spews photon energy, or the way a stone bed forged in a triple-star solar system seems to send courage gushing forth the moment you so much as lie down on it.
"That's right. And you should greet him, Gugu."
In the room where the Giosugu lodged, I presented Gugu, the spirit beast Lady Ha Yeon had left behind.
"Gugu!"
"Don't tell me the bird understands human speech?"
When Gugu greeted the Three-Eyed Sword, Jo Cheol stared at me as though he'd never seen the like in his life.
"It goes beyond that. Gugu! Feather Dance!"
"Guuuu."
Why was this bird playing hard to get? Like a grizzled sergeant counting down his final months, dragging his heels at every order. Hey. When the first sergeant gives the word, you move.
"Seniority's gone to your head, has it? We have a guest—show him a trick or two."
Do pigeons sigh, I wonder? Gugu drooped its head as if to say it had no choice, then flung its wings wide.
"Guu! Guu! Gugugugu!"
"Good heavens! A carrier pigeon that dances? Don't tell me—a spirit beast?!"
Gugu's performance left Jo Cheol speechless.
"Not all of them—only this one is a spirit beast. The rest are simply carrier pigeons that follow orders well."
"I've heard that taming a spirit beast is impossible without rare talent of one's own."
The Three-Eyed Sword looked me up and down as though I were some marvel out of a strange tale.
"I happened upon a chance to learn. Gugu! Hyper Beam!"
"Gugu?"
"You still can't manage it? Then train harder."
The spirit beasts in the neighborhood next door, I hear, can be ridden into battle and even raise young of their own. You could stand to level up a little yourself, you know.
"Gugugugu! Gugu!"
As if to say that was the most ridiculous thing it had ever heard, Gugu pecked sharply at my head, once, twice.
"Ow! Haha."
"You two certainly get along. So you take delivery orders through these pigeons?"
"So you've heard. Yes. They're my treasures."
"A method I've neither heard of nor laid eyes on."
"Something only I can do. Thanks to it, in Wuhan these days, 'food delivery' means Ungi Inn, and Ungi Inn means food delivery."
At my command, the pigeons moved as one. Not Gugu's caliber, perhaps, but to ordinary eyes it must have been a wondrous sight.
"Heh. Perhaps I should have spent my training hours learning to raise carrier pigeons instead of martial arts."
The Three-Eyed Sword even offered a small round of applause, marveling at the Giosugu.
There it was—a business idea to make his eyes go round. But tell me, brother: would you care to invest in this business? I had no intention of saying so yet.
"How could any of this compare to the illustrious name of the Three-Eyed Sword? There is more I'd like to show you—shall we head to my next establishment?"
The stage I had planned for today did not end with the Giosugu.
"T-that's a remarkably fine carriage you ride."
The moment the Three-Eyed Sword stepped into my carriage, he kept glancing about the interior as he spoke.
"With more than a business or two to look after, I spend a good deal of time in carriages. It was a bit of a stretch, I confess."
"A carriage like this isn't the sort of thing one rides on a 'bit of a stretch'..."
Naturally—that was because Lady Jegal Hyang had bought it. There was no need to say so.
Con men don't ride fine carriages for nothing, after all.
How much does this man earn from his business? His outward appearance becomes the very measure of his earnings.
A man who rides a carriage like this—would he really run off with my money? You let them arrive at that conclusion on their own, quietly. All without ever knowing what you actually make.
A good thing I'd made a point of riding the carriage today. The look the Three-Eyed Sword turned on me had shifted another degree.
"Have a look out the window there. One of my delivery men happens to be passing by."
"Where? Are all those straw-hatted Joseon men your delivery workers?"
"They are. Trained in the lightness arts as well, so orders arrive in a flash. These days, delivered meals are becoming part of everyday life in Wuhan."
"Heh. Business must be booming. Three delivery men in the space of a short ride."
Naturally. I'd planted every one of them there myself.
I have a wonderful business idea—now invest in me. A swindle that works well enough, to be sure, but not enough to tear loose a fortune a man has staked his whole life on.
Show them a genuinely thriving business right before their eyes—that is what truly whets the appetite.
Giosugu wheeled through the sky; delivery men hurried to and fro below. And I, the proprietor, surveyed it all with unhurried ease from atop a luxurious carriage.
Well? Don't you want to climb aboard that success? Even without my saying a word, the Three-Eyed Sword couldn't tear his eyes from the delivery men passing by, one after another.
"And this establishment isn't yours, I take it?"
A fine business idea, and a business that was genuinely thriving. Once I'd shown him both, it was time to show a crack.
A crack the investor could dig his fingers into.
"I supply the carrier pigeons, the delivery corps, and so on, and the innkeepers themselves run the businesses."
Arriving at another establishment, I explained the franchise model.
"Aha! In silk terms, you supply the raw material—the raw silk—and these good people weave it into cloth and sell it. Something like that!"
"As expected of you, brother! Your grasp is extraordinary."
"Quite the head for business."
The business idea, the thriving business, and now the franchise system besides. A faint awe was beginning to show in Jo Cheol's eyes.
"The venture has only just begun, you see. It's all rather a whirlwind."
"Haha! Thanks to him, these days I live on the pleasure of merely gazing at money!"
Beside the Three-Eyed Sword, the franchise owner sang my praises without pause.
I never once told him, directly, to invest.
I don't devour everything alone. Look at the people around me. This is a system that shares with others. If you simply invest, you can earn exactly the same.
I only ever let him glimpse it sideways.
"Praise him all you like—he'll never let it carry him up into the heavens."
But the Three-Eyed Sword would feel it all the same. That he, too, might fly into the sky.
"And no one else could ever hope to copy it, and—"
"Brother?"
"Ah—ah, er."
Had he just taken a short trip to the star of success and come back? The Three-Eyed Sword stared at me with wide, startled eyes.
"I must be moving along for business, so I'll take my leave."
There was no need to bring up the investment right away.
To deceive a man, the more you inflame his greed and conceal your own, the better.
Today, I was merely a younger brother satisfying an elder's curiosity. The next move was to wait a little longer—until his greed swelled that much larger.
"Right. My thanks. That was a fine sight, thanks to you."
"Just ride my carriage back."
"What? I've two sturdy legs under me. I'll walk."
"How could I possibly send you walking, brother? Take it. I've calls to make nearby anyway, so I can ride later. Coachman! See the carriage ready."
When I shoved the protesting Three-Eyed Sword toward it as though there were no arguing the matter, he backed away slowly—not that he seemed to mind.
"Yes, sir!"
"Well, well. Much obliged."
I was the one who ought to be thanking him.
"He rode home in a fine carriage. He'll be thinking that if he ran a business of his own, he could ride around in one just like it."
"You terrifying bastard..."
Jeon Gilsan had apparently broken out in gooseflesh; he scratched at his forearm as he looked at me.
"A business that looks guaranteed to succeed. A business others can't easily jump into. A business still growing. And if the hometown little brother right before his eyes is soaring higher by the day?"
"Just hearing it makes me want to invest on the spot."
"If it were a sham business, maybe. But it's real, which makes it all the harder to doubt. How do you doubt results you can see with your own eyes?"
This is why investment fraud is so terrifying.
A castle built wholly of lies crumbles at the smallest shock. But when real assets and a business you can see with your own eyes stand behind it?
Stir a man's desires, befuddle him past all sound judgment, and you can fleece investors as thoroughly as you please.
"Your business may be tempting, but will he really invest that easily? The Three-Eyed Sword is in hiding, remember."
I had already turned that thought over when I drew up the plan.
"If he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life as a fugitive."
"What are you talking about? He's already in hiding."
"For now, the excuses can still hold. He came to Wuhan on business. A trifling misunderstanding made him miss the maturity date on the principal. It only looked like hiding—he never meant to flee at all."
"And you think that story will fly?"
"He never cashed the note. That itself is proof the man is still deliberating. Mangeum Jeonjang only made this a test assignment because it's precisely the sort of situation where an excuse can still hold."
So long as it hasn't been liquidated, Mangeum Jeonjang has suffered no real loss. And the reason the Three-Eyed Sword's name sits in the Impossible Ledger is surely that his situation remains too ambiguous to drag him in.
"Aha. But he owes a fortune. He'll keep agonizing over it."
Of course, there was a chance he would abandon the business and run.
But did you take me for someone who'd miss that?
"You think I set the wolf on my own game board for nothing?"
"What?"
"Now I have to make him believe the ship he'd flee on is already in flames."
"The more I see of him, the more I see a genuinely fine young man..."
Back at the inn, the Three-Eyed Sword—Jo Cheol—muttered to himself, alone.
One look and you could tell he was an honest, upstanding young man. Hadn't the fellow even said he respected Jo Cheol—a man who had simply lived his life with sweat and effort—above anyone else? No wonder he'd become such a successful merchant.
His hometown brother had carved time from a packed schedule to ease his respected elder's curiosity—but Jo Cheol's own heart was another matter entirely.
Envy. Admiration. And—
"Haah... Have I wasted my life?"
He had lived as a wanderer, staking his life on every swing of the blade, only to end up a fugitive—while his hometown brother had become a merchant famous even in Wuhan.
Hollowed out by futility and envy, the Three-Eyed Sword found the liquor he'd ordered would not go down at all.
He said if I invested, he'd let me run the same kind of business.
Jo Cheol fiddled with the promissory note tucked inside his breast. The business was only just beginning to grow, he'd said. Then the opportunity was still there.
If I spoke up, surely... No. I mustn't decide anything so rashly.
His own life lay mortgaged, and he was on the run. This was not a matter to be decided lightly.
Jo Cheol raised his cup, hoping to wash down the knotted worry in his chest with drink.
"Goddamn Mangeum Jeonjang bastards!"
The Three-Eyed Sword turned toward the entrance, from where a voice had carried in—its owner plainly unaware of his own volume.
"Mangeum Jeonjang? What, you owe them money?"
"Had some business at the wharf, and those Mangeum bastards stopped me and called me over, that's all."
"The wharf? Why?"
"How should I know! They say black-hairs looking to board a ship have to be verified first. Made me stand there and look them square in the eye while they had their look at me. Then just waved me along. Honestly. What in the world is going on?"
"What indeed."
To some, a trivial matter worth nothing but irritation. But to one man, it arrived carrying an entirely different meaning.
"Sir, has the food lost your appetite? Shall I bring out something else?"
"No—no, it's fine."
Don't tell me Mangeum Jeonjang was searching for him.
In the end, the Three-Eyed Sword never brought the cup to his lips. The worry knotted in his chest was only winding deeper and deeper.