The Favor - 1
"Things have been rather noisy in Wuhan lately."
In the heart of the Mangeum Money Market, the Mangeum Lord watered the flowers in his garden as he spoke to the Chief Steward.
"It seems the young masters have little experience with debt collection, so they've been pushing too hard. Grumbling is spilling out from all quarters, I'm afraid."
Debt collection was the act of wringing water from a dry rag. If one was clumsy with the pressure, the rag would simply tear apart in the end.
Men who saw people as no more than dried rags had become debt collectors in pursuit of their own greed, so it was only natural that resentment came pouring out.
"A merchant's fate is to grow accustomed to the complaints of others, I know. But when grudges with a blade's edge keep echoing in one's ears, it puts many people in a difficult position."
A money house must ensure that its debtors never forget the kindness shown to them—it must never drive them to sharpen knives of resentment. Jang Noya fell short in many ways, but he did not forget his worry for his own flesh and blood, his grandsons by his daughter.
"I shall offer them a gentle word of warning, indirectly."
"Yes. And what has that one been up to these days?"
The Chief Steward did not bother to ask who the young man was. There was only one youth his master had been keeping his eye on.
"It appears he is approaching the Three-Eyed Sword."
"Hehe. So he noticed Jo Cheol was in Wuhan. Then waiting on the results should prove entertaining."
Jo Cheol might look easier a target than some high-ranking official, but he was still a man of the murim. How would Kang Yunho resolve such a thorny predicament? The Mangeum Lord was curious himself.
"I confess, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine Young Master Kang would choose the Impossible Ledger."
"The moment our eyes met, I believe he understood. That the only path to proving himself was to take up the Impossible Ledger."
It had been a test of choice.
In my estimation, the chances of any of you recovering the money written in this ledger are close to nil. Judge for yourselves, and quickly.
Who among you would dare stand before me and say, No, my lord. I will collect on the Impossible Ledger?
His grandsons by his daughter could hardly bring themselves to seize the Impossible Ledger, while the black-haired youth had lifted it without a moment's hesitation.
Shouldn't a man do at least this much if he intends to succeed you?
The Mangeum Lord recalled the scene from the day of the test, and the corner of his mouth curled upward.
"I spent that day doing my utmost to hide my astonishment, and barely managed it. To think Young Master Jeon Gilsan would stand behind Young Master Kang."
"Hehe. That one took me quite by surprise as well."
It is surely a pleasure when a man expected to deliver results brings back results worth savoring. But when someone from whom nothing at all was expected returns with an achievement no one saw coming—that is genuinely startling.
"Forgive my presumption, my lord, but I had considered him no different from the other young masters. Yet on that day, Young Master Gilsan was not the young man I knew."
"And what could Gilsan have done but meet someone?"
The only thing that set Jeon Gilsan apart from the other grandsons was that he had met a certain black-haired young man.
"That is what makes it all the more fascinating. They met through a bad blood affair, did they not? And yet at some point, there he was, standing faithfully at Young Master Kang's side."
"From time to time, a man is fated to meet a benefactor who changes his life, one way or another. That, it seems, was the boy Gilsan's fortune."
"And the one that changed Gilsan trusts beyond all measure is, again, Young Master Kang."
"Even as a child, that boy had the sharpest eye of all my grandsons. He soaked himself in pleasure and let his light dim, but then he met the person who shook him awake. His own mother and father couldn't turn that boy around, and yet this young man did. His mother will surely thank him for it someday."
To recognize the benefactor standing before you, and to trust and follow him. It was certainly Kang Yunho who had changed Jeon Gilsan—but it was the grandson who had seized the chance to change and not let it slip away.
"Young Master Kang did look taken aback, but not displeased. I hear they've been going about together lately like friends of many years."
"However diligently a man lives, sometimes the friend who sits beside him laughing at nothing, who brings the water kettle when times are hard—that friend is what matters most."
The Mangeum Lord's eyes were on the flowers in the garden, but his gaze was directed somewhere else entirely.
The Chief Steward did not presume to ask what he was thinking. A man who had served the Mangeum Lord for decades could hardly fail to notice that his master was yearning for an old friend who had left this world before him—the Lord of the Baek Family Manor.
The two of them had both been brilliant businessmen and hot-blooded young men in their day. They had been the sort of friends who could bring the water kettle to each other in hard times, even when they were the ones struggling worse.
"Should he marry Lady Jegal Hyang, the two houses will grow even closer as kin."
The Chief Steward fanned the flame of the Mangeum Lord's nostalgia for that old friendship.
"Hehe. Then I must simply wait for Hyang to hurry up and capture Kang Yunho's heart."
He had told his granddaughter to seduce the young man, so surely she would make her move. The Mangeum Lord believed in Jegal Hyang's potential.
"I am certain he will decide on the marriage before long."
"In any case, the Three-Eyed Sword, Jo Cheol... I confess I'm curious how a boy who claims he means to leave people better than he found them will manage to take another man's money."
The Mangeum Lord nodded along with his steward's words and murmured. Debt collection was, in the end, an act that could not help but breed enmity between people.
One must do distasteful things to get money back—so recovering the funds alone is a mercy, and in most cases, a man loses both the money and the person.
I will become a merchant who keeps the people too.
Even for that brash young man, this time would prove troublesome.
The Mangeum Lord was still pondering when a warrior came hurrying into the garden at a frantic pace.
"My lord! Young Master Kang has succeeded in recovering the debt of the Three-Eyed Sword, Jo Cheol!"
"Hehe. He never fails to exceed expectations."
Tell me everything. As the astonishing tale spilled from the warrior's mouth, the Mangeum Lord could do nothing but let out a hearty laugh.
"Hnnngh. That was so stressful, I could just die."
Back at the manor after the business with the Three-Eyed Sword was concluded, the youngest lady of the Jegal Clan sank into a plush parlor chair and spoke in a voice that seemed about to melt from sheer exhaustion.
"I can't believe he actually got the money back."
Jeon Gilsan gazed at me with admiring eyes, yet whatever had him in such good spirits, he kept rolling his head around with his arms crossed. And by the way, why does this guy just waltz back into our house like it's his own?
"Lady Jegal, you truly worked hard. Without you, I couldn't have even devised the plan."
Had the youngest lady of the Jegal Clan not noticed that Jo Cheol had yet to cash his promissory note, the plan could never have been drawn up in the first place. On top of serving as the plan's advisor, she had handled my own workload for me—she was, without question, the greatest contributor to the Three-Eyed Sword operation. I offered her my heartfelt thanks.
"I-it was nothing, really."
The youngest lady of the Jegal Clan averted her eyes from mine in embarrassment.
"Nothing at all? Look at this guy, Hyang. He used the warriors your grandfather assigned as your escort, posing them as Mangeum Money Market debt collectors—and now he's trying to talk his way out of it."
"It's better to use the manor's escort warriors than to reach out to the Mangeum Money Market and get called out for it, isn't it? For all the Three-Eyed Sword knew, they had genuinely come to collect him on the Market's behalf."
After all, if the youngest lady of the Jegal Clan and I were to appear somewhere together, that meant the warriors the Mangeum Lord had assigned as her escort had to move with us.
The moment the Three-Eyed Sword raised his blade at me, the Market's warriors had no choice but to step in. And in the midst of that, if I shouted at them to stand down, the escorts could only watch the situation unfold for a moment.
From the Three-Eyed Sword's perspective, the Mangeum Money Market warriors who appeared out of nowhere could only look like debt collectors—and I, the man who calmed those collectors with a single command, became, in truth, a prospective grandson-in-law of the Mangeum Lord's granddaughter.
It planted conviction about me in the Three-Eyed Sword's heart while simultaneously showing him proof that he could never lay a hand on me.
That was why I had gone to the tavern with the youngest lady of the Jegal Clan.
"Lady Jegal. Your help really was immense this time."
"I-I only did what was helpful for you, Young Master Kang."
When I kept expressing my gratitude, the corners of her mouth crept upward, and she nodded her head with a bashful look.
"Hyang. If you're grateful, tell him to take you somewhere nice for a meal. No, wait—why don't we all grab a tavern hall while we're at it?"
Jeon Gilsan looked at the two of us with a despairing expression, then quickly straightened up and made his proposal to the youngest lady of the Jegal Clan with a bold grin.
"Y-yes? A-a tavern hall?"
"With Hyang around, it'd be a bit awkward carousing with gisaeng, so... Right! I'll gather up some fun people for a drinking party. Gather a whole huge crowd and make a proper ruckus of it! It'll be fun for you too, Hyang. What do you say?"
"A-a ruckus? I, um, th-that is..."
Faced with Jeon Gilsan's invitation, the youngest lady of the Jegal Clan couldn't bring herself to refuse and just darted her eyes this way and that.
"Just let him go, Lady Jegal. Later, I'll have a table set for the two of us, and we'll have a nice meal together."
A noisy drinking party full of strangers—why not just kill her outright?
"Hnngh. Y-yeees."
When I blocked Jeon Gilsan and looked at the youngest lady of the Jegal Clan, she answered me with a delightful smile, like a white hydrangea in full bloom.
"..."
This kind of ambush attack is bad for the heart.
"Hey! Unfair! Yo! Hey! Don't I get any praise?"
While I stood there dazed, Jeon Gilsan shook my shoulder and pointed a finger at himself.
"Sure. Good work. Now beat it."
"Beat it? Beat it where, exactly..."
Jeon Gilsan let out a resigned sigh at my soulless praise.
"You go home, that's where. You should head back and rest too. We've both done our share, so let's everyone get a good night's sleep tonight."
Look, I'm grateful for the help, but aren't you coming and going from this place a bit too much like it's your own house these days? I'll be eating well and resting with the youngest lady of the Jegal Clan tonight, thank you very much.
At my words, Jeon Gilsan's face darkened rapidly.
"Well, the thing is..."
"What is it?"
"...If I go home, my mother is there."
Jeon Gilsan mumbled with a defeated look, head bowed.
"..."
So the lingering resentment over his giving up his candidacy as heir has been going strong for quite a while, has it?
"She keeps saying, 'If all you're going to do these days is loaf around, you should've just sat the examination!' and whacks me across the back! This brat! This little brat! I couldn't tell if I was a person or a wooden training dummy! If I stay home too long, my blood literally dries up! Listen—if you don't pass the second round, you and me. We're both dead, right now. Dead as in murdered by my mother!"
Apparently, Gilsan's current standing in his household was somewhere around that of a self-proclaimed exam-taker in his Nth year of doing nothing but hanging around the house.
"What, why am I getting dragged into this?"
"So you've cleared one Impossible Ledger entry and that's it? You're done?"
It seemed that for the sake of Gilsan's poor backside, if nothing else, there was no time to rest.
"He gave us a month. One entry is a bit thin. There's still time until the deadline, so I intend to take on another."
The candidates who took ledgers of lesser difficulty could push their claims if they racked up enough recoveries of their own. To claim first place, I would need to clear at least one or two more.
"As far as I could tell, black-haired folks in the ledger all ended with the Three-Eyed Sword. You actually have a plan? Honestly, no matter how I look at it, there's no answer there."
"The groundwork has already been laid."
"What? When?"
"While I was handling the Three-Eyed Sword affair—killing two birds with one stone. I've cast lines in several places, though the problem is, if they don't respond actively, there's nothing more I can do."
Having considered the possibility that the Three-Eyed Sword plan might fail, I had been scattering bait ever since the moment I received the ledger.
"Who are you targeting? One person? Or several? Come on, tell me."
"Well, you see..."
Just as I was about to lay out the plan for Jeon Gilsan, Sibi appeared at a brisk trot.
"Young Master Kang, a guest has arrived who insists on being received immediately."
"There he is."
The Impossible Ledger.
Like the Three-Eyed Sword Jo Cheol, the ledger was filled to the brim with names that invited only one question: could anyone actually recover money from this person?
Among them were a great many familiar names—most of them the officials of Wuhan whom I'd had to deal with one by one during the recent Shadowless Divine Thief activities.
But besides those names, the ledger held one utterly unexpected entry.
A name that made me wonder: why on earth is this person written here?
"Lord Inspector, but may I ask what brings you here?"
"Look, I'm sorry to ask this, but... could you perhaps spare me some money...?"
The Imperial Inspector, Jeong Munwon.