Journey to Yichang - 1
The printing press expedition had been formed.
The place where Dang Hwarin and I currently were lay in the northeast of Hubei Province, near Anhui. Her maternal grandfather, on the other hand, lived in Yichang on the western side of Hubei, close to Sichuan Province. It was going to be a journey that took a considerable amount of time.
I needed to become famous by writing novels. For that to happen, I needed to grow closer to Dang Hwarin during the trip.
Getting close to Dang Hwarin required a process of unlocking her heart.
It was the same as some college guy named Kang striking up conversations with the girl he liked a hundred times, sending the first messages, diligently hitting like on every SNS post—yet if she never responded, all of it turned into empty shouting into the void.
I’ve already unlocked the lock that filled Dang Hwarin’s heart.
I had flipped her distrust of me into the opposite and guided her toward placing her trust in me instead. On top of that, I had once again hammered home the rational reason I was helping her.
The fact that Kang Yunho had been a sworn friend of the Poison Human.
If Dang Hwarin had come to believe that, then the only person in this entire world who could approach her while overcoming her complex would look like me alone.
If I become famous, I can change her future.
In the original timeline Dang Hwarin becomes a Poison Human and turns into a villain amid pain and contempt. She no longer needs to suffer. With my power as a Yeokcheonja, Defier of Destiny, she will be freed from that agony.
If I use the printing press to become famous, she might be able to rewrite not only the pain but the future itself.
Even though I had opened her heart with a setting of my own creation, the closer we grew the more the relationship would become pure mutual benefit.
A journey for each other’s brighter futures.
That was how we set out for Yichang to make it happen.
Ten days into the journey.
Rather than following the official roads that offered better security at the cost of long detours, we chose the faster route to Yichang.
The path grew more and more unpleasant the farther we went, yet sharing the hardships made our relationship grow easier in the opposite direction.
“I can’t believe this.”
Dang Hwarin sat in the inn and stared at me like I was something unbelievable.
“What.”
“Hey. Kang Yunho. Weren’t you supposed to be a master?”
“I never once claimed I was a master.”
The reason she was looking at me like that was simple: we had run into a pack of bandits on the road.
— The hell? What kind of barbarian brat doesn’t get cut by steel?! Boys! Swarm him!
Dirty bastards. If Dang Hwarin looked strong they should have run. Why pile onto me? Did they think they were the Shaolin Eighteen Bronze Men? It wasn’t as if they were shouting “We’ll beat the crap out of him, you barbarian try using an iron club!” either.
Of course there was no way the Jade Face Bodyguard Art was going to be pierced by a bunch of half-baked itinerant bandits who barely knew martial arts.
“I never thought I’d have to handle the whole lot by myself.”
Dang Hwarin was strong, as expected. Every hidden weapon she threw sank cleanly into a vital point.
“Hey, let’s keep the story straight. I took care of three of them.”
I grinned proudly and held up three fingers. Well done, Kang Yunho. You can now deal with three sword-wielding bandits.
“Haa. So proud of yourself.”
She let out a sigh that already foresaw all the suffering still ahead.
“What will you have, customers?”
While Dang Hwarin was massaging her temples, a waiter approached our table.
“Water first.”
She didn’t even glance at him; her insides still seemed to be burning from looking at me.
“We don’t serve water separately, customers.”
“What kind of inn doesn’t give water?”
She snapped at the waiter in an irritated tone that demanded to know what nonsense he was spouting.
Dang Hwarin. Looks like this girl has never set foot in a cheap inn. I gave the waiter a smile that said, Please explain the ways of the world to this clueless young lady.
“At our inn, water is self-service!”
“Water is water. What’s ‘self’ supposed to mean?”
She turned a completely blank face toward me, unable to parse the word.
She doesn’t even know what “self” means. Young lady, if you ever want to take the civil service exam you should at least study reflexive pronouns.
Every time I saw this side of her I was reminded all over again that she had grown up being treated as a proper young lady of a great house.
“I’ll go get the water.”
I rose from my seat with a smile.
“Hey. Kang Yunho. Why the hell are you fetching water? That’s what you tell the waiter to—wait, is it not?”
Watching me walk off for the water jug as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and the waiter watching me do it just as naturally, she finally seemed to grasp the meaning of “self.”
She kept staring with the dazed expression of someone still reeling from cultural shock even after I set the jug down in front of her.
This is why rich young ladies are the way they are.
Then again, when I first arrived in this world I got the same shock in a different flavor after hearing “water is self-service.” What are you gonna do?
“What will you have, customers?”
Once the water was on the table the waiter smiled as if nothing had happened and waited for our order.
Dang Hwarin recovered enough from the culture shock to start scanning the menu.
“What should we get?”
“Whatever you feel like. Just order what you want.”
I wasn’t about to play my old section chief who always said at Chinese restaurants, “I’ll pay today so order whatever you want—though the jajangmyeon here is the best,” while giving meaningful glances.
“I’ll have the cream cheese spa—”
“Marketplace gukbap is the cheapest here. One marketplace gukbap for me.”
“Yes! One marketplace gukbap. And for the lady, cream cheese spaghetti, correct?”
Dang Hwarin hid her face behind the menu and peeked only her eyes out, carefully watching me.
I ignored her gaze and dug out my money pouch for payment—noticeably lighter than it had been when we first set out.
“…I’ll have marketplace gukbap too.”
She eyed that pouch intently and changed her order.
You can eat what you want, you know.
Since she was being so considerate, I decided to award her one special trust point for excellent social awareness.
“Yes! Two marketplace gukbap!”
“The money… is it really short?”
She asked carefully while eating her gukbap.
“It’s getting tight, yeah.”
I answered as if it were nothing. This place’s gukbap was pretty good. More meat broth than I expected.
“…I see.”
She kept her head down and only glanced at me from time to time while she ate.
The reason she was walking on eggshells was simple enough.
The money I had already spent on her medicine and lodging was substantial, and securing rooms on the way here had been one headache after another.
— A black-haired barbarian and a veiled woman? Just looking at you two spells trouble. Get out.
— Our inn doesn’t take suspicious guests who hide their faces. Every time people like that stay, sword-wielding martial artists show up later and trash the place.
— They pulled that shit at the place next door? Here you only need to show your face once and you’re fine. Aagh! Plague carriers! Get the hell out! Out!
Inns that refused us because Hwarin kept her face covered, inns that refused us flat-out thinking she was contagious… finding places to sleep had been a constant ordeal.
High-class inns accepted her, but every night we spent in one of those made my money pouch lighter still.
Fortunately today’s inn stood in a backwater village that wasn’t picky about customers.
“If it really gets bad there are ways, so don’t worry yourself sick. The sun’s already going down. Let’s head to the room.”
Living expenses were definitely dropping, but it wasn’t as if I had no options. This village would have plenty of people ready to listen to a good story.
The real problem was finding a method that brought in enough funds without delaying our schedule. That was something I would have to figure out myself.
I spoke to her with a completely unconcerned face.
“Yeah. Okay.”
She only gave a small, passive nod, still unable to stop fretting over my expression.
“Hey. You. A-are you out of your mind?”
The moment we stepped into the room Dang Hwarin spun on me with a face full of pure rage, as if the earlier sulking version of her had never existed.
“Why.”
“Whyyyy? You look at this room and still ask why?”
She jerked her chin around the interior.
The facilities were run-down, sure. But she wasn’t angry about that. Whenever I struggled to find lodging she always shrank into guilty little-ball mode beside me.
The real reason was something else.
I looked at the single large bed in the room and spoke.
“You were the one who kept complaining at the other inns that a married couple couldn’t possibly be forced to sleep apart, so this is the room we got. Just sleep.”
Out of consideration for her we had been taking high-end rooms and separate beds until now. But that could only last so long.
Budget-wise we now had to share one room.
“How can a man and a woman s-sleep in the same room?”
Her voice trailed off into a mumble. Sohee had never minded.
“Then shall I go book a second room?”
“…No.”
Yeah. You saw the state of my pouch. You know we can’t afford that right now.
She looked back and forth between me and the bed with a strangely flushed face, then seemed to reach some decision. She dragged two chairs over and lined them up beside the bed.
What exactly is she doing with those chairs?
“I’ll allow you to sleep in the same room. Just don’t cross these chairs.”
Tch. A barrier, huh.
Taking my silence for agreement, she lay down on the bed anyway.
“What a joke.”
I paid for the room and she thinks she’s monopolizing the only big bed? Not happening.
I demolished her little barrier and flopped straight onto the mattress.
“Hey!”
She bolted upright with a startled cry.
“What.”
Still lying down, I simply rolled my head to look at her with the most unbothered expression I could muster.
She seemed shocked by the complete lack of embarrassment or ulterior motive on my face; her eyes trembled.
After staring at me for a long moment as if wrestling with something, she finally spoke again, cheeks bright red.
“Y-you. You might not know this because you’re a barbarian, but in the Central Plains if a man and a woman share a bed they have to be husb—”
“People share beds even when they aren’t married. Just sleep. I’m exhausted.”
Hell, even childhood friends with the Heavenly Killer Star shared beds just fine.
I was no longer the old me who lost sleep simply from sharing a bed with a woman.
Thanks to that special training that wasn’t exactly special training with Sohee, I had become a body capable of sleeping with a cool, clear mind.
With a bed this wide our bodies weren’t even going to touch. I closed my eyes to shut down further conversation.
“Hey. Hey. Hey! Kang Yunho. Cut the bullshit and get up.”
Yeah. No reaction. I’m a harmless man. So you should get some sleep too.
Even with my eyes shut I could feel her glare trying to bore holes through my body.
“Ah! Shit! For real!”
She glared daggers for a while longer, spat out a few choice curses, then finally gave up and lay down.
Yeah. Giving up is easier.
Sleep, sleep.
The bed was soft enough that sleeping itself posed no problem.
The problem that greeted me the moment I opened my eyes in the morning, however, was large enough to cause an immediate physiological reaction.
Whoa. Dang Hwarin is way bigger than I thought.
What filled my entire field of vision upon waking was pure, overwhelming volume.
At this size she might actually surpass Sohee.
When the hell did she change clothes? Before I closed my eyes she had definitely been wearing her travel outfit, yet somehow she was now in something that looked like sleepwear.
The thin fabric covering her whole body made the majestic grandeur of her chest stand out in full force.
She usually wrapped herself up so tightly that I had only vaguely thought “maybe she’s big,” but I never imagined it would be this size.
This is straight-up beyond Central Plains dimensions.
If Sohee was beyond Joseon, then Dang Hwarin was beyond Central Plains. A size that truly made the chest look majestic and sent the lower body into intense physiological revolt.
I need to get up and plan today’s schedule.
Inside my head the faction demanding I calm my lower half and rise immediately locked into fierce combat with the faction insisting I simply burn the magnificent scenery into my retinas forever.
Just as I reached a dramatic compromise—plan the schedule mentally while committing the vista to memory—
“Hey. You. What the hell are you staring at.”
Dang Hwarin’s ice-cold voice shattered the compromise completely.