I Have My Own Work Philosophy
Lee Yeok and Ahn Eun-chae arrived on foot at a small village with no name, and stepped into a run-down tavern kept by an old woman whose hair had gone white as snow.
The tavern keeper brought out kelp soup without a word.
Ahn Eun-chae, past caring about appearances, shoveled down spoonful after spoonful in a desperate hurry. It was the sort of food that, under normal circumstances, she wouldn't even have been able to bring herself to smell.
Lee Yeok, apparently with no appetite, picked out a few scraps of the solids, then sat down across from Eun-chae and gazed up at the night sky.
It was a full moon.
Beneath the clear, washed-silver light, a human figure took shape in the distance.
Lee Yeok rose to his feet.
Ahn Eun-chae scrambled up after him in a fluster.
"Stay here."
"But—"
"I won't go far. You're safe here."
Lee Yeok vanished from before Ahn Eun-chae's eyes in an instant.
In mere handfuls of steps, he reached the edge of the village.
The female assassin trudging along stopped dead in her tracks. Something hung across her shoulders—a bundle that, at a glance, looked like gourds dangling in clusters.
"Move aside. I've got a report to make to my client."
"You lunatic. You're planning to show that to that ditzy girl? If she drops dead of a heart attack, you and I both end up dog meat."
"A job is a job. It has to be done properly."
"I'll verify them myself. Relax. I'll deliver every single one to the girl, guaranteed."
The female assassin set down the heads she'd been carrying on her shoulder, bound together with straw rope.
"Nine heads. Eleven from the two of you combined during the day. I'll throw in one free for every ten—that comes to ten thousand nyang."
"Fine. Ten thousand nyang, verified."
"Well then. I suppose I've got no particular reason to kill you anymore."
"Oh? Is that so? So you're not afraid of me, then?"
In a flash, the female assassin moved like the wind. The sword she'd drawn in a heartbeat swept down toward Lee Yeok's neck.
Then she was back where she'd started, sheathing her blade.
"You've gotten faster."
Sssk. The female assassin's trousers slid down around her ankles.
"And you've gotten filthier."
Lee Yeok, who had vanished leaving only an afterimage, materialized out of the shadows across from her. Hanging from his hand, at some point in the exchange, was the assassin's belt.
"If I'd been just a little more vicious, your pants would already have stopped being yours."
The female assassin clutched her collapsing waistband.
"Give it back."
Lee Yeok smirked and tossed the belt over. While she fumbled her waistband back into place, he spoke.
"You said it yourself, didn't you? That fat bastard who tried to stiff me—his sister's an elder of some sect."
"Are you planning to do something about it?"
"When I get a spare moment, I'm thinking of visiting that household and relieving them of a few things. Once I'm done there, what's this pocket change going to matter?"
The female assassin, belt refastened and clothes straightened, fell into thought for a moment.
"Thirty thousand nyang. Not a coin shaved off. And you hand over thirty percent of whatever you steal."
"You're a greedy one. You don't think I could manage it alone?"
"Then go alone."
"Something unexpected always comes up. I need an escort. Besides, I'm only offering this as compensation for you giving up on killing me."
The female assassin gave a short nod.
"Fine. We'll renegotiate the contract fee."
"Let's hurry and get that girl to Jinseong first. Then a quick trip home... and after that, we'll see. I ought to find out for myself what's so damn special about these immortal sects anyway."
Lee Yeok turned his head away as if there was nothing more to discuss.
"Oh, right—verification's done, so do whatever you like with the heads. Roast them, boil them, I don't care. Just don't let the girl see them."
A little later, Ahn Eun-chae turned to the returned Lee Yeok and asked with an anxious look on her face.
"You... didn't go out stealing just now, did you?"
"Good grief. It feels like the Phantom Thief spends his whole life either on his way to a heist or in the middle of one."
"That's not what I—"
"Thieves come in all sorts. I'm a true Phantom Thief who works alone and steals purely through skill. Not some common cutpurse lifting trinkets from ordinary folk. What would there even be worth stealing in a nameless little village like this?"
Ahn Eun-chae pursed her lips.
"You certainly have your own work philosophy."
Curiosity bloomed in her toward Lee Yeok. His words and actions lacked all consistency, he wielded double standards as a matter of habit, and a warped kind of madness seemed to seep from him—yet even so, she couldn't help wondering about him.
"What kind of life did you live, that you became a thief?"
"You want to hear my story? I've got nothing to offer beyond a handsome face, you know."
Lee Yeok rose from his seat.
"Spare me the idle chatter and get some sleep. We leave early tomorrow morning."
* * *
The moment the sun so much as peeked over the horizon, Lee Yeok and Ahn Eun-chae set out.
They'd bought a mule cart dirt cheap from the tavern where they'd stayed. The old cow pulling it was no speedster, but it beat walking the considerable distance that remained.
Trailing behind them came an assassin. The female assassin.
"What kind of person is he?"
Eun-chae asked in a hushed voice.
Lee Yeok, for his part, found her endless new stream of questions nothing short of tiresome.
"A self-taught drifter of an assassin, that's all."
Of course, that wasn't all he was. His swordsmanship was exceptional, he excelled at head-on combat, and he happened to be the pampered young master of a rather wealthy family, to boot.
Whether it was the combination of those two things that had inflated his confidence, he was unusually committed to open, frontal contests for an assassin.
The female assassin walked at a leisurely pace, yet lost no ground to the mule cart.
"At this rate, will we even make it to Jinseong on time?"
"Want a ride? Five jeon of silver."
"You money-grubbing bastard."
The female assassin muttered the curse under her breath, then continued.
"Where's your master these days?"
"No idea. Buried in some pleasure house or tavern, or flat at a gambling table, probably."
"My, my. Quite the vigor, for a man his age."
"Takes after your father, doesn't he? Saw your father at Chunyeong Pavilion the other day. Distinctive taste, I'll give him that. The woman he had on his arm—"
"Enough!"
The female assassin cut him off in a hurry, face twisting.
"Tsk, tsk. Burning through vitality like that, how's he meant to live out his natural span?"
"If the old man dies early, that suits me just fine."
Lee Yeok clapped his hands and laughed.
"Fair point! When the old codger kicks it, should we throw a celebration banquet?"
"When the old man dies, everything he has becomes mine. A celebration? I could hold a feast every day for a year and not run out."
"Then why wait? Just tell me where your father's vault is. I'll do a little lap around the place, and we split it fifty-fifty. Simple, right? Why go through the tedious bother of killing people for money?"
"Don't even dream it. Only the old man knows where the vault is."
"What a waste. What a crying shame."
Ahn Eun-chae's soul had left her body.
Do these lunatics have a single shred of humanity between them?
"Hey, this is way too slow. At this pace we'll reach Jinseong sometime next year."
"Can't be helped until we find proper horses. I'm going to sleep until we hit the next village."
Lee Yeok sprawled out across the bed of the cart.
The female assassin watched him in silence for a while, then spoke again.
"Is this how you plan to live forever? I've saved up a hundred thousand nyang. Halfway to my goal. Just ten thousand nyang more and I'll enter the immortal sects."
"Don't care. What I've got now is plenty. If you don't believe me, I could go relieve you of your savings right this second."
"No matter how high you fly, in the eyes of the sects you're nothing but a cur, a swine—not even worth calling a mortal."
"I don't follow. Sect members are people, and I'm a person. If I'm a cur and a pig, then so are the sect folk."
The female assassin shook his head.
"Such pointless pride. Water flows down to the lowest ground, but a man is meant to climb toward the heights."
"Stop it, stop it!"
Lee Yeok shot upright.
"I'm just an ordinary man. I'll live the way water flows, that's all. Why climb to the heights? So I can fall from somewhere even higher?"
The female assassin sighed.
"I'll grant you your skill. But that ambitionless streak of yours—it's pathetic, truly. Someday I will become a Sword Immortal, and by the time I do, a man like you will be..."
"Give it a rest, you exhausting man."
Just then, Ahn Eun-chae spoke quietly.
"Only through cultivation can you truly take control of your own fate. You may be supreme in the mortal world for now, but the day you cross paths with a true cultivator, you won't even get the chance to lift a hand."
Lee Yeok and the female assassin both turned to look at her, caught completely off guard.
Lee Yeok opened his mouth as if to fire back a rebuttal—then simply lay back down.
Before long, the sound of his snoring filled the air.
* * *
The road was quiet. For three days, nothing happened that required either Lee Yeok or the female assassin to lift a finger.
"Looks like they've called off the attackers. I suppose they've realized they're no match for us."
Lee Yeok offered no particular reply to the assassin's observation. The judgment might well have been right—or it might have been exactly backward.
Before anyone noticed, they were within a hundred li of Jinseong, and only then did the party allow themselves to relax a little.
"Don't forget—the promised fee plus everything we ate and drank comes to... thirty-three thousand nyang in total. I'm not waiving the service charge."
"And ten thousand for me! I'll waive the fee for my chatter, though, out of the kindness of my heart."
The female assassin added hastily.
Ahn Eun-chae sighed. She'd thought that, over their days together, they'd at least developed some small bond of affection—but it seemed she'd been mistaken.
"Don't worry. I won't short you a single coin."
Lee Yeok and the female assassin snickered. They made quite the picture of consummate rogues.
By the time the sun had grown harsh overhead, they finally set foot on Jinseong soil.
For the first time in days, a smile spread across Eun-chae's face. She had survived, after all.
But Lee Yeok and the female assassin seemed to be thinking something else entirely.
"Well, that ended far too easily."
"Well, the bounty on that woman's head is rather substantial."
At the end of the two men's gazes stood an old man of gaunt build, leaning on a long sword like a walking staff.
Only then did Eun-chae recognize him.
"Second Uncle?"
The old man spoke in a bitter tone.
"You should never have made it this far."
"Uncle An-ryeong, what do you mean by that? While I was making my way here, I..."
"Yes, yes. I know."
Ahn Eun-chae's words died in her throat. Sharp as she was, it took her only a moment to grasp the situation. The color drained from her face.
"Surely... this was all you, Uncle?"
"Your elder sister is already cultivating within the clan. You must cultivate no further. You could become a grave threat to the family itself."
An-ryeong let out a long sigh.
"I'd hoped you would be dealt with on the road... instead, it falls to me to take my own niece's life."