Pure Goodwill
Pure goodwill.
I am the bosom friend of a Dokin who died a tragic death. Dang Hwarin resembles that friend, so I want to help her. I completely misjudged how solid that premise and motive would be.
In truth the premise was fine; the motive was the problem.
Paying her room fee, covering her medicine costs, and offering to travel a long road with her just because she reminds me of a friend? That was bound to look suspicious.
Ironically, for a motive of pure goodwill to escape doubt, I should have built a direct connection first—something like a fiancé who risked his life hunting for her, or a childhood friend reunited after ten years.
Of course, if I had kept playing the kind-hearted man to the end I might have held the act together. But the moment I heard the printing press, my expression slipped and the performance collapsed.
Now that I was exposed, should I simply confess my real intentions?
‘The reason I wanted to travel with you was the printing press. Sorry I lied.’ If I bowed my head and said that, I’d only lose.
In Dang Hwarin’s mind I was already branded a liar.
What would happen if I admitted the printing press had been the real goal?
People rarely stay pure receivers of goodwill. The second a relationship carries even a small price, a sly little calculation starts to grow in the dark. I received a favor from the barbarian, but he’s a liar, and in the end I’ll just give him what he wants. So I can do as I please. Actually, I’m the one in charge. That kind of thinking.
So what now?
‘Just rebuild the board from scratch.’
She still believed the story I had told her. The only thing she had caught was that my pure goodwill was actually a black-hearted scheme. That left room for a second try.
I would drop the kind-man persona and switch to a casual, black-hearted style of speech.
Prepare properly and I could make Dang Hwarin drop to her knees and beg me to take her along.
Dang Hwarin.
I was going to hold the initiative.
To seize the initiative again I first needed a way to open the tightly shut door of Dang Hwarin’s guest room.
“Really, barbarian. You’re going to pay the medicine bill?”
“Yes. I’ll cover that money. Shop assistant, you come too. I’ll settle the room fee as well.”
After paying the herbalist and the inn staff I quietly locked eyes with them behind Hwarin’s back.
‘Was that good enough?’
‘Perfect.’
We had arranged the whole scene in advance.
I’ll pay everything, so please hound her for money in front of her. She’s a martial artist, so feel free to be rough—just don’t curse, I had stressed.
In a dramatic enough crisis even a prince who is your mortal enemy starts looking redeemable.
Dang Hwarin would feel gratitude toward me; her rage would cool. And while it cooled I would slip right back into her room.
Solid opening.
Next came the perfect bait.
“How do you even have this?”
Dang Hwarin’s eyes went round as she stared at the container on the table.
“Medicine my bosom friend created. He died before he ever saw it finished. But I still remember the formula.”
I gazed at the container with a bitter expression.
Naturally what sat inside was no cure. It was just grain and dried-fish powder pressed into crude health pills—something like wall-grain pills or ration pills, a meal substitute.
Feeding fake medicine to a Dokin skilled in poison arts risked her identifying every ingredient, so I flipped the idea and made the “medicine” out of food.
“……If I take this, can my body get better?”
The mention of my friend made her glance at me carefully before she spoke in a small voice.
How would I know?
I still hadn’t fully mapped how a Yeokcheonja’s power affected a Dokin heroine.
“One pill a day. Just swallow it and the Dokin pain disappears for certain. The skin discoloration… I don’t know. By the time this formula was nearly finished my friend’s condition was already far past mere discoloration.”
I wore the face of a man picturing a dear friend’s pitiful end.
How far did the Yeokcheonja effect reach? If I judged by the Heavenly Kill Star’s murderous intent, pure pain relief might be the limit. If there were extras, though…
For a Dokin heroine I might even discover skin-whitening, relief from the shoulder strain of her heavy chest, or the muscle aches left by martial training.
In that case I would charge her more later.
“Is this really a cure for a Dokin?”
Dang Hwarin stretched a trembling hand toward the container.
Where do you think you’re taking that? I snatched it back into my robe.
She stared at me, clearly wondering why I would show it only to yank it away again.
I had dangled an irresistible lure.
Now it was time to whitewash myself.
“Hey. Dang Hwarin.”
I called her name with complete confidence.
“What?”
“Why the hell did you throw me out earlier?”
“If it were you, would you just sit there watching some bastard whose black heart is written all over his face lie about pure goodwill?”
“Ah, so my pure goodwill was actually a lie. That it?”
I brushed one hand through the air as if the whole idea were absurd.
“W-what. You did lie, didn’t you?”
My brazen attitude must have landed; she faltered for a second.
Are you starting to wonder whether the lie was only in your own head?
If I had truly been lying I never would have reappeared, paid her debts, and walked in carrying medicine.
Time to drop more weight on that scale.
“Hey. If I had no goodwill toward you at all, would I have told you what the medicine really was that night? Would I have stepped in when those people started a fight? Would I have spilled the secret of the Dokin?”
Go on—try to refute my pure goodwill.
Everything I just listed was pure fact; she wouldn’t find an easy counter.
“……When you started talking about your maternal grandfather I saw your eyes change.”
Apparently no better argument came to mind, so she fell back on what she had observed.
I still have to wash the black heart clean.
No matter how carefully I prepared or how neatly I stacked the logic, if I failed to bleach the black heart the whole thing was worthless.
That was exactly why I had switched to casual speech and remade my image.
“Dang Hwarin. What do you think my job is?”
“You’re a Maedamja.”
She knew. So after that first night she had actually looked into me.
“Right. A Maedamja. Do you really think a storyteller walks around with as much money as a rich young lady like you?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“You’ve lived your whole life rich, so the idea of worrying about money is probably a strange, rare experience. But a Maedamja like me lives with that worry every single day.”
“Hmph. So in the end you were after money too.”
She snorted and wore the expression of someone who had just confirmed I was no different from every other bastard.
“After money? What kind of thinking is that? Ridiculous. Dang Hwarin, do you always smear people who approach you with goodwill like this?”
“What? Fuck, it’s true.”
Seeing me snap back as if I were the wronged party, she cursed, yet her shoulders hunched a little—her certainty was already cracking.
That’s right, Dang Hwarin. You were mistaken. I never had a black heart to begin with.
Now I’ll explain it to you.
“I wanted to help Miss Hwarin, but I don’t exactly roll in silver. Still, I couldn’t just ignore a young lady in the same kind of trouble my friend once faced. While I was chewing over that very practical problem, I happened to hear about your maternal grandfather. Wouldn’t anyone think, ‘Ah—I can get the money back later’?”
Not a black heart. I simply wanted to help you and then ran into reality.
I was boldly bleaching the black heart down to a respectable shade of gray.
“……If that was all, you could have just said so. Why claim it was pure goodwill?”
She thought for a moment and offered a half-hearted protest.
Good—she was buying it. Time to reinforce the foundation.
“I was being polite to you. ‘Miss Hwarin, to tell the truth I’m not wealthy. You will repay me later, won’t you?’ How exactly am I supposed to say that? And it’s not as if you could hand over the money right then.”
“I can pay once we reach my grandfather’s house.”
A weak counter. I crushed it lightly under one finger.
“Which is exactly why there was no need to say anything. The moment we arrive at your grandfather’s place it’ll be, ‘Ah, my friend! You must have suffered bringing my granddaughter home!’ and he’ll take care of me himself. Am I wrong?”
“He… would take care of you.”
She could picture it well enough; the admission came reluctantly.
“So I ran a few numbers in my head. According to you, is that a black heart? Fine—call it a black heart if you want. I told you the medicine’s identity! I settled your debts and fights! I revealed the secret of the Dokin! I even made this medicine! And if at the end of it all I hope to be treated well by your grandfather, then yes—it’s a black heart. Absolutely a black heart!”
I raised my voice without a shred of shame. Dang Hwarin had nothing left to say; she lowered her head, face shadowed.
Nothing to add? You’ll accept that the black heart is only gray, right?
A short silence settled.
Still looking down, she spoke so quietly I almost missed it.
“……Even so. For it to be a relationship of goodwill, you have to come with pure goodwill. You can’t approach with that kind of calculation.”
Just admit defeat already. Why keep going?
—Yes…… every last one of them. All they ever care about is what I possess.
The words she had flung at me just before I left the room earlier rose in my memory. So Dang Hwarin still clung to some fantasy about pure relationships.
Shock therapy, then.
“Ha. Honestly. Full-stomach talk from a flower grown in a greenhouse. Hey, Dang Hwarin. Be straight with me. You don’t have any friends, do you?”
I raked my fingers through my hair in open frustration and let irritation color my voice.
“Wh-wh-what! Fuck, what did you just say?! I-I have friends!”
Her face flushed crimson in an instant.
Dang Hwarin, that expression—exactly the same one I used to wear when the popular kids asked, “Yunho, you’re a virgin, right?” and I yelled, “Fuck off, I’m not a virgin!” while lying through my teeth.
She really didn’t have any friends.
Makes sense. With that skin, no one approached. Locked inside the house, the only people who ever came near her were fortune-hunters after a rich young lady.
Perfect. That gave me an opening.
“Dang Hwarin. People approach each other for all kinds of reasons. Along the way you find someone who fits, deepen the bond, and only then does it become the goodwill relationship you keep talking about. The reason you don’t have that isn’t because no one ever came with pure goodwill—it’s because you never managed to earn their trust.”
“……”
She shut her mouth as if a whole lifetime of sore spots had just been prodded.
Driving her any further wouldn’t be right. Time to lower the rescue rope.
“Hey. Dang Hwarin.”
“What.”
“If you want pure goodwill, from now on I’ll travel with you out of pure goodwill.”
“What? You only care about my grandfather—”
“Not pure goodwill toward you. Pure goodwill toward my dead friend.”
I set the medicine I had kept inside my robe back on the table.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“This medicine. My friend spent his life researching it and died before he ever saw it finished. After he was gone he told me to cut open his corpse and keep studying. Can you even imagine? Gathering famous physicians, watching them carve up your friend’s body and experiment with the pieces—what that feels like.”
I stared at the container with a heavy, grief-stricken face.
“You… cut open the body?”
Her mouth fell open in shock; she looked from me to the container and back again.
“Even in death my friend believed I would finish the medicine. I couldn’t betray that faith, so I finished it. Therefore his legacy—my goodwill for my friend—will go with you so I can watch it heal you.”
“……”
She stared at me, still reeling.
How’s that, Dang Hwarin? Suddenly hit with a story both pitch-black and noble—can’t quite gather your wits, can you?
I had shaken her thoroughly.
Now it was time to take the initiative.
“In exchange. Starting today, you try to earn my trust.”
I pointed at her with an open palm and a faint smile.
“Why do I have to earn your trust?”
Her voice was a little sulky.
“Because I helped you when you were at the lowest point of your life.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I helped you when you were in trouble and asked for nothing. You rejected me, yet I still wanted to help and made a treatment. I am completely unbothered by your appearance. To you I might be trash you can discard, but I am still the person who came closest to that ‘pure goodwill’ you keep demanding. I can be the first—and last—person in your life who approaches you with goodwill.”
“Uh……”
My rapid-fire logic froze her like a sluggish kiosk that had stopped responding.
I drew a breath and delivered the final line.
“So at the very least, try to earn my trust. Then the relationship you want… might become possible.”
In the original history, the side effects of being a Dokin left poison powder drifting from her entire body. The contemptuous nickname they gave her was Dokjeop—Poison Butterfly—Dang Hwarin.
She cursed the fate of the Dokin and the Sichuan Dang Clan itself, committing evil deeds while the world laughed. No one in that history ever approached her with goodwill.
I was the one holding out a hand to her now.
Lonely Dokin. Dokjeop. Dang Hwarin.
If you can just reach out, I’ll take it.
“……What happens if we never manage to build that trust?”
She turned her head slightly and asked in a voice that lacked confidence.
Good. She was almost there.
“When we reach Yichang, if we’re still nothing more than travel companions, I’ll take the money from your maternal grandfather and we’ll part ways.”
“And if we do build it?”
“Haha. Well… shall I cut you open like I did my friend?”
“Wh-what the hell.”
“Nothing comes to mind right now. We can decide later. So—are you going to try earning my trust, or not?”
Are you coming with me or not?
I slid the medicine container toward her as a token of acceptance.
You know what it means if you pick that up, right?
She looked from my face to the container, hesitated, then finally spoke.
“……I’ll try.”
Dang Hwarin, of course, picked up the medicine container.