The Favor — Part 5
Hyewol Pavilion was hardly one of Wuhan's thriving pleasure houses. Its only claim to fame was Hongran and a handful of courtesans of similar caliber, and even during prime business hours, its upper floors sat empty.
In other words, it was the kind of establishment that would wobble and collapse the moment a government official decided to shake it down.
"Send someone to fetch the Owner, quick!"
"The Owner isn't just next door, sir! What are we supposed to do?!"
So this was the taste of sweet power. No wonder constables went around the market accepting free meals from merchants.
I hid my thoughts and waited with a stone face, until a manager appeared wearing an expression of profound apology.
"Forgive me. The Owner has a gathering on the Donghu side, and it will take considerable time for her to return by boat."
Hyewol Pavilion sat north of the Yangtze. Donghu was to the south.
"I see. I hate waiting—it bores me."
"If you're pressed for time, the Owner would be happy to attend to you at any date and hour you wish…"
Trying to play games with me, are you? I put my arm around the manager's shoulder and smiled.
"Hey. Aren't you curious which is faster—me walking out and coming back with a squad of constables, or the Owner coming back by boat?"
Should I just tear this whole place apart? At my smiling words, the manager went white as a corpse.
"W-we shall escort the constable to the top floor at once!"
The top floor of a pleasure house—the playground of VVIPs only. They were promising to serve me lavishly while I waited. But I had no intention of being satisfied with so little.
"Why should I drag my tired legs upstairs for something I don't even want to look at? Don't you think?"
"He's right. There's nothing worth seeing. Let's just take our business to another house."
Gilsan read my meaning perfectly and casually restated our demands.
Bring Hongran. Or shall I flip this whole establishment upside down. The manager hadn't built his career by being slow to make decisions.
"We will bring Hongran to you immediately."
That's more like it.
"Hey. Any openings for a constable position?"
While we waited for Hongran on the top floor of Hyewol Pavilion, Gilsan asked, eyes gleaming.
"Why?"
"The job looks better than I thought."
Apparently the whole scoundrel-hiding-as-a-constable situation had grown on him. Gilsan looked positively envious of my position.
"Forget it. I only got in through a special appointment. Normally it's a job where you drag yourself to the government office before dawn and work all day long."
Could a guy who can't even show up to a tavern on time manage that?
"Tch. Never mind, then."
Gilsan clicked his tongue and abandoned the idea with astonishing decisiveness.
"When Hongran gets here, we'll do it as planned. Act like you did earlier."
"Acting? I was just being my usual self."
"…"
Right. No wonder it felt like it went beyond the bounds of acting.
What would I say when Hongran arrived? How would I probe for whatever scheme might be hiding underneath? I was turning it over in my head when a knock came at the door.
"Constable. We've brought the girl you asked for."
Finally.
"Send her in."
"Ooh…"
The door opened, and with an admiring sound from Gilsan, a courtesan with hair the color of red peonies stepped into the room.
"This humble girl is called Hongran. I heard you were looking for me."
Her eyes are dead.
Hongran was smiling, just as the Inspector had said—but she was a woman with dead eyes.
Thin, gloomy features. The kind of face that would get lost among brighter, more vivacious courtesans—yet the sort that someone, surely, couldn't bear to leave alone.
The Inspector really did fall for her, I see.
She was beautiful, all right. Not on the level of Maehyang, whom Gilsan adored so much, but pretty enough to turn a man's head.
Not quite the debut-center face of a major agency's idol group, but certainly pretty enough to hold center stage for a mid-tier company. Lord Jeong Mun-won. You truly didn't remember her, didn't you?
"This is Constable Kang Yunho."
"So you're Hongran. I've heard a great deal about you."
As Gilsan introduced me, I regarded Hongran with a grave expression.
"Constable… Kang Yunho, you say…?"
The moment she heard my name, Hongran looked at me as if startled.
Natural enough. If she'd been close with Inspector Jeong Mun-won, she would surely have heard about me too.
"It seems you know something about me."
"Forgive my boldness, but… might you be—"
"Hold on."
I raised a hand to cut her off. Hongran and Gilsan both looked at me questioningly. Wait. Something's off here.
It was too quiet.
The moment we stopped speaking, not a single sound drifted up—as though the top floor stood entirely empty.
I knew it.
I circulated the Soyun Mind Image Art. Opening my mouth, I filled my voice with a deep, resonant timbre that seemed to roll through the walls themselves.
Haomen scum, the lot of them. They were clearly pressing their ears to the walls, hanging on our every word.
"Ooh…"
Only now grasping the situation, Gilsan let out an admiring groan.
Why hasn't anyone moved? Get out already—before I start checking the next room.
"Um…"
When I paused for a reaction, Hongran spoke up carefully.
"Yes?"
"Everyone stays well clear of this floor, for fear of provoking your temper, Constable."
"…I meant only that there were rats about. I noticed at the entrance that Hyewol Pavilion carries no Sesugo seal—a pest-control measure, isn't it? You'll be needing a sanitation inspection at some point."
Run a food-and-drink establishment and the Sesugo seal is mandatory for keeping vermin at bay.
Even in the face of my magnificently flawless answer, Hongran continued as if it hadn't fazed her at all.
"From what this humble girl has heard, there is only one black-haired constable in all of Wuhan."
"Is that so? You know of me?"
"I was told you are a constable of rare caliber. I also heard that should one ever suffer an injustice, one should seek out Constable Kang without a moment's hesitation."
"What a curious compliment."
"A most dependable man, I heard. But… Constable…"
Hongran looked at me warily.
In her dead eyes, a small question had begun to gather.
The person who had dragged her out of hiding. That person was the very constable she'd heard so much about. Could it be that his purpose in seeking her out was what she suspected? She couldn't help but think so.
I nodded to her questioning gaze.
"Yes. The Inspector sent me to find you."
Life returned to those dead eyes.
"Ah… so the Inspector has been keeping well, I trust."
There she was—the woman he'd described. But unlike the light returning to her eyes, her voice was cold as ice.
"The Inspector sent me to learn how you've been faring."
Despite her frigid manner, I stated my purpose plainly, as the Inspector's messenger.
Not the reaction I was hoping for.
The plan had been to drop the name and watch what surfaced.
— What will you do when you meet Hongran?
— The Inspector's been utterly ruined. Even if she's redeemed from the registry, she'll be living hand to mouth with a beggar debtor. Just drop his name and something will spill out, one way or another.
If money were her aim, she'd grow flustered or hesitant. If she were part of the Owner's scheme, she'd tell the truth. But a reaction of utter indifference had not been in my predictions.
"I see. Then please tell him not to concern himself with me any further."
Hongran turned her head away, as if she couldn't stand the sight of me.
"What did you say?"
"A man of such important duties—tell him not to waste his thoughts on the women of Hyewol Pavilion, and to devote himself faithfully to his tasks from now on."
Hongran's face scrunched in disgust at the mere thought of it.
"You don't seem to be the Hongran of Hyewol Pavilion I've heard about."
By all accounts, she was a woman who had come back to life, found her will to live again, walking beside the Inspector.
Hongran gave a scornful laugh at my words.
"This is what I've always been. Isn't a courtesan's very duty to show a guest her most pleasing face? Everything I showed before the Inspector was pure performance. So keep only the pleasant memories, and don't go clinging on after me."
"The Inspector worries himself sick over you—how can you speak to him so carelessly?"
What is going on here?
Could the child in her belly not be his? Was it the Owner's plot all along? Or had she already learned he'd been ruined into a debtor, and was trying to shake him loose?
As I stared at her in disbelief, Hongran rose from her seat as though she couldn't bear to remain a moment longer.
"Your purpose seems fulfilled, so I will take my leave. I'll tell them to send you finer girls than me. Please, don't trouble yourself with anger."
No. Something's wrong.
Something felt off. It was too cleanly severed—like a knife cutting through cloth. There was even a will to escape, even if it meant hacking off her own arm. Why?
— Everything I showed before the Inspector was pure performance.
She's… performing? For me?
Why would Hongran act before me?
No—surely not.
"For a single courtesan, the Inspector is staking his very life—how could he be brought low by such a creature… tsk, tsk."
I circulated the Soyun Mind Image Art. It was a pitying murmur to myself, but pitched with enough force to nail itself into the ears of a woman trying to flee the room.
"…?"
Hongran faltered.
"And with the Inspector now in such precarious straits… what is to be done about this affair. Haah."
With the Inspector in the gravest danger. Are you really going to walk out?
Feigning that I didn't care in the slightest whether she stayed or went, I muttered on, heavy with pity.
"Wh-what are you saying?"
Hongran stopped as if nailed to the floor, and asked without turning her head.
The cracks are showing. She's barely holding on, and the mask is trembling. I knew it even without seeing her face.
"What do I mean? Do you have any idea how the Inspector has been running himself ragged, trying to redeem you from the registry?"
"Th-that can't be true. He clearly told me to give up on him."
I knew it.
On the face of the woman who had turned away, not a trace of that earlier coldness remained. Where does she get off trying to out-act an actor?
So there was information the Inspector hadn't told me. No matter—it was easy to pry information from a woman whose mask had already shattered.
"Does he strike you as a man who would say such a thing?"
At my single words, Hongran's eyes trembled uncontrollably.
"But… is the Inspector truly raising the money?"
She didn't even know he'd already paid the Owner a portion of it.
"He's been running from place to place to buy your freedom."
"A man who wouldn't accept so much as a private bribe—where could he possibly find such money? Surely not… is he borrowing from others?"
How do you know all this?
"He's borrowed from Mangeum Hall and any number of other places."
"No!!! Borrowing money so recklessly will ruin him! Aren't you someone the Inspector trusts, Constable Kang?! What on earth have you been doing all this time?!"
Excuse me? Why are you yelling at me?
"I scraped together what little I had and lent it to him myself."
Confronted by Hongran's sudden transformation into a scolding housewife, I found myself offering excuses before I knew it.
"You mustn't…! Absolutely not. That's exactly why he told me to give up. Because of me, that upright, honest man—borrowing money. And later, if he bends even his convictions and accepts bribes—then I… I…"
Hongran's expression crumbled. Guilt and despair, anguish tangled together, as she backed away toward the window.
"What are you doing?"
What's gotten into her all of a sudden? I leapt up in alarm.
Hongran stopped at the window, looked between me and the world outside, and then—having clearly made up her mind—spoke.
"Constable Kang… please tell him to forget a wretched creature like me and live happily."
Hongran threw herself at the window.
"Hey!"
"No!"
My inner energy surged into my Yongcheon acupoints.
My feet moved as they had been trained to move in any situation whatsoever. A supreme leaping judgment that said: save the life first, whatever the moment.
The Shadowless Body Art barely caught hold of Hongran's life.
"Ugh!"
"What in the world are you doing?!"
I seized the ankle of the falling woman and hauled her up in one motion.
"As long as I disappear, he'll never give me up!"
Hongran screamed, wild with grief.
"So you try to die instead?!"
"I cannot watch him be destroyed because of me!"
Hongran scrambled up from the floor and charged toward the opposite window.
"Hey, grab her!"
"Wha—whoa!"
Gilsan and I tackled Hongran like linebackers and pinned her to the floor.
"Hey, hey! She's going to bite her tongue off! Block it! Get something to gag her mouth!"
Why is she so strong? Has she trained in the martial arts too? Nobody ever taught me how to subdue a warrior.
"Give me something!"
"Got it—I'll use my sleeve!"
I tore off my sleeve in one motion and stuffed it into Hongran's mouth.
"Mmph! Mmph! Mmph!"
"Hey! Gilsan! Hold her legs—she's thrashing! I've got her arms!"
"Wha—wha?!"
Gilsan grabbed the ankles of the furiously struggling woman. This won't do. We'll have to bind her limbs and pin her down.
"Hold still! How can a woman with child be so reckless with her own life! The Inspector is working right now to save both you and your baby!"
Where do I find rope? Nothing for it—no other way. I tore off my other sleeve as well.
"He's here! Constable Kang is in this room!"
Just as I'd twisted my sleeves into makeshift rope and bound Hongran, a voice sounded outside the door.
Thank the heavens! Someone's coming!
With more people here, perhaps we could calm her down and finally talk.
Come in, quickly! Hurry!
The moment I pinned down both of Hongran's arms with all my strength, the door I'd been longing for finally opened.
"Did I not order you never to set foot in a pleasure house?!"
The person who appeared was someone I had never expected.
"L-Lady Hyangju?!"
"What… in the world… is going on here?"
The expression of the Gi-mun Hyangju, who had stormed in looking ready to explode, grew colder by the instant.
What she saw: two men gagging a courtesan with cloth, mounted atop her, pinning down her arms and legs.
"Ah… um… you see…"
It was a posture far, far too perfect to explain away.