A New Encounter - 5
I figured out that Dang Hwarin is a heroine way too quickly.
Originally I had planned to grow close to her first, piecing together various clues before reaching that conclusion. The evidence was just too obvious, though.
Should I get closer to Dang Hwarin?
I could solve her predicament and draw nearer to her in the process. I already had a solid setup prepared for that.
The real question was how close I needed to get.
It ranged from simply covering her room fee and parting ways, all the way to throwing my entire body into helping her just to grow closer.
If Dang Hwarin were the true heroine, the latter would be the right call.
The problem is, if Dang Hwarin can become a heroine, then every other female character can be turned into one too.
A stifling weight settled in my chest.
Get close to Dang Hwarin, find another heroine and get close to her, then get close again, repeating the same actions over and over… how was I supposed to figure out which one among them was the true heroine?
Contrary to my worries, I might still manage to identify the true heroine along the way. But finding her would bring its own problems.
I could end up with the same conclusion as with Sohee.
A situation where I fall short of the essential capture values needed to fully win the heroine, forcing us apart. After struggling so hard to capture the true heroine, I might find myself forced to release her into the wild like some eternally ten-year-old monster trainer.
What matters to me right now isn’t capturing heroines. It’s fame.
Rather than hunting down heroines one by one and getting close to them, it would be wiser to write books, become famous, and then deal with the heroine candidates who came seeking me out.
I’ve already achieved my goal of resolving the questions about the Yeokcheonja. I’ll just help Dang Hwarin enough to earn some goodwill and then part ways.
I had already helped her more than enough. I had stopped her from heading toward a tragic fate and revealed the hidden truth to her.
If I helped her out of her current trouble and then left, I would still be able to plan for the future without needing to grow any more intimate with her.
Yeah. What heroine capture? Writing books came first.
“Lady Hwarin.”
“Huh? What.”
Dang Hwarin answered with a slight start when I called her after being lost in thought for a moment.
“What are your plans going forward? Do you have somewhere else to go?”
“My maternal grandfather runs a small trading company in Yichang. That crazy bitch said she was heading that way too, so I’m planning to go.”
“A trading company in Yichang? You have quite the remarkable grandfather.”
Yichang in Hubei Province.
A bustling city in the western part of Hubei, where official roads managed by the authorities stretched out like a spiderweb.
If you left Yichang and followed the official road west, you reached Chengdu, the city famous for the Sichuan Dang Clan. Head north along the road and you arrived at the renowned Wudang Sect.
And that was not all. Since it sat beside the Yangtze River, riding the current downstream would take you to Wuhan, the largest city in Hubei.
To think her maternal grandfather ran a trading company in a city of that scale.
I’ll cover her overdue room fee, help her onto a carriage bound for Yichang, and then we can part ways.
Farewell, Dang Hwarin.
Thanks for helping me resolve the Yeokcheonja question.
Since I told you the truth too, you can feel grateful to me—and don’t become a Dokin.
If I build up enough fame and you turn out to be the true heroine, you’d better come find me.
“He’s just running a bookstore and a general store in Yichang.”
He’s running a what?
“A… bookstore?”
My voice trembled; I could not rein in the emotions stirred by this unexpected revelation.
Running a bookstore? If he could call it a trading company, did that mean the scale was large enough to operate several bookstores rather than just one?
In this world, if a trading company of real size was running bookstores, then maybe…
“Yeah. He brings in interesting books from elsewhere to sell, or contracts with authors and prints them separately.”
“A-aha. If he has a printing press to print books, it must be a trading company of considerable size.”
I could not control my racing heart. A printing press. A trading company equipped with a printing press.
It would not be modern automated machinery, of course—more like the woodblock printing or metal movable type mentioned in textbooks—but if I could use it, I would be able to mass-produce books in the truest sense.
Naturally, buying one myself was unimaginable, and without huge capital and connections, even using one was impossible.
In this world I was nothing more than a despised barbarian, so I had given up on the possibility from the start.
If I could just use a printing press, there would be no reason to waste time writing one book and then spending ages copying out dozens more by hand.
I had already wanted to help Dang Hwarin, who was in trouble because of thoughts of my tragically deceased friend… but now I absolutely had to accompany her all the way to Yichang.
Surely her grandfather would not roar at me, “A barbarian wants to use my printing press after I brought my granddaughter back safely?!”
Grandfather of Dang Hwarin.
I will escort your granddaughter safely. Please wait for me.
Why did Dang Hwarin’s expression suddenly change like that?
When I looked at her with a fluttering heart, her face had abruptly gone sour and cold.
What? Did I do something wrong?
“In that case, Lady Hwarin, I will pay your room fee for now.”
“Why would you?”
“Does there need to be a reason to save a lady in distress? Please take it as pure goodwill.”
“Aha? Pure goodwill?”
Her voice rose slightly. A faintly displeased tone. Why all of a sudden?
“Once I’ve settled the room fee, let’s go to Yichang together.”
If I piled on the favors thick enough, she would not be able to refuse when I asked to use the printing press, right?
“Why are you coming with me?”
“It is a long road to Yichang, is it not? Should something happen to your health along the way, you will need someone to care for you.”
“I’m asking why you are coming along.”
So I can use your family’s printer.
Her voice had suddenly turned picky. Are you dissatisfied? If you are, I will even specially cover the cost of the A4 paper.
“It is because my friend came to mind. Knowing you are unwell, how could I possibly send you off alone?”
I looked at her with a good-natured smile.
“Hey.”
But the voice that came back was ice-cold.
“Yes?”
“You. Are you going to keep lying?”
In that instant the air around us froze solid.
Lying?
I had spoken only the truth. Where had the suspicion come from?
When someone suspects you and presses you, immediately affirming it or panicking is the mark of an amateur. That only confirms their doubts. Instead I needed to stay calm and figure out what “misunderstanding” there might be.
“Lady Hwarin. What do you mean by lying?”
I spoke to her with a completely baffled expression.
“Hey. Your pure goodwill. Thinking of your friend. It’s all lies.”
Dang Hwarin looked at me as if I were ridiculous.
How did she know?
“Lady Hwarin. My friend who died an unfortunate death simply came to mind, and when I looked at you I could not treat it as someone else’s business, so I only wanted to help. And you call that a lie?”
I spoke to her with a genuinely wronged expression.
“So because someone resembles your friend, you just hand over money to a stranger and accompany them on a journey that takes dozens of days?”
“My lady, I believe there is some misunderstanding here.”
From her tone I could feel that her suspicion had already hardened into certainty.
Why, after believing me just fine until a moment ago, was she suddenly so doubtful?
“Misunderstanding? Do you think I haven’t seen plenty of bastards like you who approach with polite speech while wearing a mask over their dirty ulterior motives? You. The moment I said my grandfather runs a trading company, your eyes changed. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”
Dang Hwarin looked at me with the conviction of a detective in a mystery comic who has gathered every piece of evidence and is finally shouting that you are the culprit.
I must have failed to control my expression when I heard about the printing press.
The mystery was solved.
If she had even slightly caught onto my intentions, all my talk of pure motives would have looked like some middle-aged man molesting a girl and then making the excuse that she reminded him of his daughter.
“Given the situation… given what happened with my friend… still, I had a tiny bit of hope. Yeah. There’s no way anyone would purely help a woman like me…”
Deep disappointment colored the muttering voice and the face of Dang Hwarin.
Fortunately she still seemed to believe the story about my Dokin friend. Well, that one was impossible not to believe.
“Lady Hwa—”
Swish! In a flash a hidden weapon shot past my face. When had she even drawn and thrown it?
“Lady Hwarin! Lady Hwarin! Bastards who carefully use polite speech like you while harboring ulterior motives give me the creeps. So get lost.”
Dang Hwarin spoke to me in a decisive voice.
“My lady.”
“If you don’t leave right this second, I’m aiming for the space between your eyes.”
“I will see you next time.”
Fine. I’m leaving, I’m leaving.
“Yeah… Every last one of them. All of them are only interested in what I have.”
Just before I closed the door after stepping out of the room, I clearly heard her small, lamenting words.
“Fuck. …Of course there wouldn’t be.”
There was no way anyone would approach her with pure goodwill. Dang Hwarin muttered bitterly to herself.
That was something Kang Yunho had greatly overlooked as well.
From a young age Dang Hwarin had suffered disgust and contempt because of her skin.
The people who showed her favor had always approached not because of her, but because of the background she possessed.
The flicker of ulterior motive in Kang Yunho’s eyes had lasted only an instant. Most people would never have noticed it.
Only Dang Hwarin, who had spent her entire life among people wearing masks, had been able to catch that fleeting greed.
“Fuck. That son of a bitch! That barbarian bastard!”
Dang Hwarin poured out her rage alone toward the already vanished Kang Yunho.
Honestly, she had hoped. A man who had a friend in the same circumstances as herself. A man who could not bear to watch the same thing happen again and had told her why she had ended up this way.
A situation where she was drowning in shock and could not pull free.
For someone who had never even had a boyfriend, let alone a friend, how was she supposed to keep her wits about her when a man like that showed her goodwill with a kind smile?
“……Looking so damn decent.”
Yeah. The one who failed to keep his head straight was the bastard who had casually hit on her. It was not her fault for losing her composure to a guy who looked like a young nobleman despite being a barbarian.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Dang Hwarin.”
She settled her heart and spoke to herself in a slightly sad tone.
The greater the hope she had placed in Kang Yunho, the more that single instant of greed had destroyed everything. This man was the same as all the others after all.
No one approached her with pure goodwill. She trembled with a private sadness and sense of betrayal.
“Ugh.”
After lying on the bed for hours with a complicated heart, the pain returned, and Dang Hwarin simply fell asleep as she was.
Bang bang bang!
When the surroundings had grown dark, a knocking sound came from outside the door. Could it be that man? Dang Hwarin rose from the bed, put on her face veil, and opened the door.
“Who is it?”
A man she did not know was waiting with a thoroughly angry face.
“I’m the owner of the medicinal goods shop! Why haven’t you paid for the medicine?!”
“Medicine money? Those bastards didn’t even pay for the medicine?”
Apparently the servants who had run away had also failed to pay for Dang Hwarin’s medicine.
“A whole week’s worth of medicine fees is overdue! Pay up right now!”
“……I’ll give it to you later.”
“Later my ass! I already know you can’t even pay the room fee!”
When Dang Hwarin tried not to pay, the medicinal goods shop owner began hurling every kind of verbal abuse.
As voices rose, people opened their room doors and peeked from outside, but no one came to help her.
On the contrary, the inn’s martial artists even came upstairs, merely watching the situation in the hope they might collect the room fee.
Miserable. Dang Hwarin listened silently to the man’s abuse and mocked herself.
— You crazy bitch. Your temper’s filthy too. If it weren’t for the money, I never would have gotten involved with you!
That was what the servants who stole the money had said. Yeah, they were right. With a face like this, being sick, and a temper like hers, who would ever help a woman like her?
Once her background disappeared, there was not a single person who would help her. She had known that her whole life, yet experiencing it directly made it pierce her chest even more sharply.
— My closest friend was also a Dokin.
A certain man rose in Dang Hwarin’s mind.
Yeah. The man who had resolved the quarrel that morning had clearly approached her with goodwill at first.
Even while speaking with her face veil removed, he had never once sent her a look of disgust. That had definitely been a first for Dang Hwarin.
The part about his friend being a Dokin was surely true. The pure goodwill he had shown both at the Seong Family Manor and today must have been true as well.
Perhaps, because of her own inferiority complex, she had mistakenly decided midway that he had ulterior motives.
Had she rejected his goodwill for no reason?
“Are you listening to me? Hand over the money!”
Dang Hwarin looked at the medicinal goods shop owner who was thrashing about. What should she do? She was in debt; she could not use force. How was she supposed to repay it?
It was hopeless and wretched.
Then it happened.
“I will pay it.”
Kang Yunho appeared before Dang Hwarin with a smiling face.
I paid Dang Hwarin’s entire room fee and medicine bill and sent everyone away.
“What, why did you come back?”
Dang Hwarin sat in the chair with a prim expression and looked at me.
“Hmmmm.”
When I frowned and glared at Dang Hwarin while humming thoughtfully, she showed clear signs of fluster.
“Wh-what! Do you want me to say thank you?”
Apparently even she felt guilty; she avoided my gaze.
Perfect situation. Waiting had been the right call after all.
The fact that I had deceived her would be neutralizing itself together with the gratitude of having been saved in a moment of crisis.
A situation where she could not unilaterally drive me off. For the re-challenge, I would start with shock therapy by changing my attitude.
“Hey. Dang Hwarin.”
“What did you just say? Are you talking casually to me now?”
“You said you hate people who use polite speech. You’re talking casually to me, so why can’t I?”
“You. You’re finally showing your true colors, huh?”
Dang Hwarin briefly frowned at my changed attitude, then seemed to think she had finally grasped my real nature and wore a smile of satisfaction.
“Hey. Dang Hwarin. I’ll accompany you to Yichang.”
“I told you. Bastards like you…”
Thud!
“Wh-what is that?”
I cut off Dang Hwarin’s words and set a strange container on the table hard enough to make it ring. She asked in surprise.
She probably wanted to say something about not wanting to travel with a man who had ulterior motives, whose insides she did not know, and who wore a mask.
But you know what, Dang Hwarin?
You absolutely cannot refuse me.
“It’s a treatment.”
I revealed the identity of the trump-card weapon that would let me seize this opportunity once more.
“A treatment?”
“A treatment that can resolve the side effects of a Dokin.”
“What?!”
Dang Hwarin startled violently and stared at the treatment sitting on the table.
The truth was, her medicine was not inside the container—it was standing right in front of her eyes, and she did not even know it.
I asked her with a triumphant expression.
“Let me ask again. Dang Hwarin. Coming with me? Or not?”