My Master Is No Womanizer
"Die, traitor!"
Yeon Sowol, clad in crimson martial robes, screamed it like a death cry. In the same instant a cold blue-white flash lanced from her fingertips.
A dagger.
She had not simply thrown it.
The Demonic Cult's ultimate art — a killing technique steeped in a curse that calls for blood. To be struck by it was instant death.
"Proprietor!"
Yujin cried out in horror and lunged, but it was already too late. The dagger was screaming straight for the space between my brows.
"You crazy—"
I thrust out a hand on pure reflex. There was no time to draw a weapon. All I held was a single dumpling wrapper I had just rolled.
Fwip!
I snapped my wrist and sent the wrapper flying, pouring internal energy into that slack dough and lending it a vicious spin. Whirling at blinding speed, the wrapper hardened into something like a steel ring.
Clang!
An impossible metallic ring split the air. Wrapper and dagger collided in midair. The steel blade ricocheted away, and the spinning skin of dough sheared on, neatly severing the cord of the woman's bamboo hat.
The hat slid free and struck the floor.
The face beneath: skin white as fresh snow, lips a stark red against it, and crimson eyes roiling with rage and grief.
"Sowol..."
I was stunned.
Yeon Sowol. My direct disciple, and the Saintess of the Demonic Cult — a girl who had always followed me with a smile. Why in the world was she trying to kill me?
"Don't say my name, you womanizer!"
Tears brimmed as she drew two more daggers from her robes.
"Abandoning me and running wasn't enough for you? You bury yourself in this miserable backwater and play house with some mistress?! How could you do that to me? Did you hate me that much?!"
"What mistress?! I was making dumplings!"
"Shut up! I'll kill you, and then I'll die too!"
She charged like a woman unhinged. The shop became a battlefield — tables flipped, chairs took flight — and the customers who remained screamed and bolted for the door.
"Aigoo! Save me!"
"Must be a lovers' quarrel!"
"Blades! Run!"
No. At this rate the shop would be smashed to pieces, and my identity along with it.
"Yujin! Shut the door!"
I shouted and snatched Yeon Sowol's wrist.
"Let go! I said let go!"
She thrashed, but she could not break the grip of the Heavenly Demon. I hauled her clean off her feet and bolted into the kitchen.
"Hic... nngh... waaah..."
In the corner of the kitchen, Yeon Sowol sat bound to a chair, weeping as if her heart would break. There had been no rope on hand, so I had tied her with fresh noodles I had already pulled. The dough had enough spring to hold surprisingly well.
"Have you calmed down?"
I asked it while straightening my rumpled clothes. She only glared, venom in her eyes.
Yeon Sowol was the first disciple I had ever taken, and the one I cherished most — a child I had picked up when I was twenty and raised with my own hands. That had to be more than ten years ago now. The first time I found her, she had nowhere to go and was shivering in the cold. I had only pitied that sight so badly that I took her in despite the opposition inside the Cult, and she had grown into someone truly remarkable.
Back then I had thought of myself as the adult, and of Sowol as nothing but a little girl. Now she was the very age I had been when I first met her. Time was a cruel thing.
"Sowol... did the Cult send you to do this?"
"...No! I came on my own two feet!"
She faltered, then pressed on.
"Cult Lord... no — Master! You're really too much!"
The tears started again.
"Too much how? A disciple throwing daggers at her master is a good deal worse."
"You abandoned me and fled in the dead of night! Not even a single letter!"
"What are you talking about? I told you I was going into seclusion. I wanted a quiet life."
"Seclusion was the excuse! You ran off to set up house with some other woman!"
She shrieked it at the top of her lungs.
"At first I really believed that. But... but! I heard all of it!"
She wiped her eyes with a handkerchief and went on.
"The Murim Alliance Leader's daughter — that Namgung Seol, or whatever she's called, that seductress — they say the two of you giggle away in here every single day! Even if you were going to cheat, how could you cheat with an Orthodox woman?!"
Ah. So that's the rumor.
It was true that Namgung Seol came often. But that was nothing more than a relationship of mutual interest.
"It's a misunderstanding. She's just a customer. A regular."
"A regular? Don't make me laugh! Who else do you make dumplings for besides me? You said you'd only ever do it for me!"
"......"
That had been years ago. Sowol had been hurt in training, and I had made her a late-night snack to comfort her. Just the once. The girl remembered far too well.
"Listen carefully. I have no interest in women. I came here for one reason, and that reason is cooking."
"Cooking?"
"Yes. I grew sick of the blood-soaked martial world. I wanted to make food that keeps people alive. Look."
I gestured around the kitchen: tools of every kind, spices sorted by type, fresh ingredients hauled in since before dawn, and, stacked along one side of the shop, secret manuals of cooking. This was no pastime and no disguise. It was a craftsman's space, built in earnest.
Yeon Sowol stared blankly about her. The Heavenly Demon she had known was a sovereign of blood and death. The man before her now wore an apron, flour on his hands, tenderly polishing a dumpling steamer.
"You really... came here to make dumplings?"
"I did. I don't even have time for mistresses. My back is crooked from kneading and steaming all day."
I brushed a stray strand of hair from the corner of her mouth, still bound as she was.
"If you came to kill me, then kill me now. I won't fight back."
I took up a kitchen knife and cut the noodles. Her arms came free. The daggers sat on the shelf right beside her. She could not bring herself to take them.
"But first."
I opened the steamer. Steam curled up in soft white threads.
"Eat a dumpling I made, and then kill me. Call it my last dish."
I blew on a freshly steamed jumbo dumpling and held it to her lips. She hesitated, then parted them just a little and took the bite.
She chewed. It was warm — the same taste her master had secretly made for her on bitter winter nights after training, when she was small. No. Deeper than that. Richer. The savor of pork and the green fragrance of chives flooded her mouth and thawed the heart that had frozen solid.
"Hic... sob..."
Tears burst from her eyes again. These were not tears of rage.
"Waaah... it's good... so much better than the food back at the Cult..."
She wept like a child as she swallowed, cramming her mouth full of dumpling until she was sniffling through a running nose.
"Everyone in the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult's dining hall deserves to die... leaving a flavor like this and boiling grass gruel every single day..."
"Eat slowly. You'll choke."
I held out a cup of water. She drained it in a single swallow, then looked up at me with reddened eyes. The killing intent was gone. Something stickier, and far more dangerous, had filled the space it left.
Obsession.
"All right. I'll believe you."
She sniffled as she said it.
"If you didn't run away because of a woman... then I'll forgive you."
"My thanks. Then go back to the Cult. I already passed the Cult Lord's seat to the Vice Lord, so—"
"I don't want to."
"What?"
"I'm not going."
She shook her head, utterly firm.
"I'm staying here."
"Staying? To do what?"
"To watch you."
Her eyes flashed.
"Fine. I'll allow that there's no woman right now, just as you say. But those Orthodox seductresses will never leave you alone. They'll come swishing their tails in here with dumplings for an excuse!"
"I'm telling you, this place is nothing but lunatics obsessed with martial arts..."
"Be quiet! Men are all wolves, and women are all foxes! I will protect you, Master."
She snatched a spare apron off its hook and cinched it tight around her waist.
"From today, I work here. As your watchman — and as part-timer number two."
"Hey. You didn't even ask—"
"Don't like it? Shall I start throwing daggers again?"
She spun a dagger on her fingertip, round and round. A threat. This was employment by naked coercion.
"...And the wages?"
"I don't need them. Just give me dumplings. And the seat right beside you, Master."
She smiled, bright as a blade. Crimson martial robes under a kitchen apron — a strangely fitting combination, and a dangerous one.
Just then Yujin, who had been hovering outside and reading the air, eased the door open.
"Proprietor... are you all right? The customers have all run off."
"Ah, we're fine. The misunderstanding's settled."
I let out a breath and made the introduction.
"Say hello. Starting today, you'll be working together. This is Yeon Sowol."
"How do you do. I am Yujin."
Yujin bowed. Yeon Sowol looked him up and down, then snorted.
"Hmph. Something about you stinks. Ignore me and try anything clever, and you die."
"...I beg your pardon?"
Yujin was plainly baffled. I shook my head and waved it off. One way or another, the crisis was over. I had survived a brush with death and picked up an extra pair of hands in the bargain.
But I was overlooking something. The hell that would begin tomorrow.
Namgung Seol, the ice-cold beauty of the Orthodox faction, and Yeon Sowol, the fiery Saintess of the Unorthodox — the clash of opposing natures when those two women met inside a single shop. Hotter than any dumpling steamer, and far more dangerous: the opening move of the worst shadow war the murim had ever known.