The Sorrowful Temp Worker, However, Lands a Big Score
Lee Yeok and the girl could not leave right away. For a long while, the girl wept before the bodies of Oh Hyeol-gyeong and the other escort warriors.
"Miss, you can't stay like this. If word gets out that the ambush failed, a second wave may come. We need to leave here as soon as possible."
At Lee Yeok's prompting, the girl finally managed to drag herself to her feet on unsteady legs.
"Is this the right way?"
"Leaving right now is out of the question. Let's return to Wolgye Fortress for the time being."
The girl gave him a puzzled look, but faced with Lee Yeok's resolute manner, she had no choice but to comply.
It was a decision Lee Yeok had reached after careful deliberation of his own. The girl's body and mind were spent, and if she was to walk anywhere on her own two feet, rest seemed essential first — for Lee Yeok had not the slightest intention of carrying her there himself.
Besides, his funds were running low, and he needed to convert the jade tablet he'd received as an advance payment into silver. Even if pursuers did come, they wouldn't dare run wild inside a walled city, so circling back was the safer option.
On the way back to the fortress, Lee Yeok asked his new employer — the girl — for her name.
An Eunchae. She had been on her way to Jinseong to visit a relative, or so she said.
Whether she really had been on her way to see family, and if so, why she'd been ambushed by unknown assailants, was a mystery — but Lee Yeok decided not to pry. What mattered right now was money.
Returning inside the walls just before dawn broke, Lee Yeok shoved An Eunchae into a shabby inn. He handled her with all the courtesy of a man moving a sack of cargo.
"You have a long road ahead, so please rest a while. I know this establishment well — you need have no worries."
Lee Yeok bowed his head politely.
"Oh, and the lodging fee is five nyang of silver. You currently owe me twenty-five thousand and five nyang."
An Eunchae was dumbstruck.
She had seen him hand the innkeeper of the tavern a mere two nyang for lodging just moments ago!
Lee Yeok was gone before she could lodge a protest. But having survived the worst night of her life, she lacked the strength even to sustain her anger. In less than an instant, she was sound asleep.
Lee Yeok set out to dispose of the jade tablet. The Dark Shadow Union would handle stolen goods — at half their market value, mind you.
He passed through a dark, winding alley and entered an ordinary-looking private home. A man was standing guard. He glanced at Lee Yeok, turned his head away with an air of disinterest, and spoke.
"What is it?"
"My goods have gone moldy. I've come to dry them in the moonlight."
The man gave no real reply, just fiddled with something beneath a shelf on the far wall, and a hidden door beside Lee Yeok swung open without a sound.
Lee Yeok stepped through. After passing through several corridors, a vast passage opened up before him, as grand as any main thoroughfare above ground. If you ignored the torches hung at even intervals along the walls, it looked almost like a marketplace.
That place was the Dark Shadow Union's headquarters and its black-market exchange. Being morning, it was bustling with thieves come to peddle the goods they'd stolen the night before. Every last one of them radiated a crafty, sinister air.
Lee Yeok walked slowly, sizing up which fence would offer the best price for the jade tablet, when his eyes met someone else's. The man had been watching him for quite some time already.
The man in black clothes kept his piercing gaze fixed on Lee Yeok as he sprang to his feet and strode over.
"Are you Lee Yeok?"
Lee Yeok's face broke into a servile expression as he bowed low.
"Just as you say, this humble wretch is Lee Yeok. May I have the honor of your name, my lord?"
The man in black answered coldly.
"The Punishment Hall of the Dark Shadow Union."
Lee Yeok layered on even more flattery.
"Ah, greetings, venerable elder of the Punishment Hall. Would someone as exalted as yourself have business with a lowly wretch like me? Perhaps you have a task to entrust to me? Merely give the word, and I shall—"
"Silence. I know that you murdered your employer last night. You've broken the Union's rules time and again, and we've overlooked it — but now you've finally crossed the line. Come along quietly, or die where you stand."
Lee Yeok bent at the waist with easy grace.
"Elder, judging the matter with my small, humble brain, it seems to me you're laboring under a rather serious misunderstanding."
"Enough! Do you think that mere three-inch tongue of yours can carry your guilt?"
"Not at all. I merely wish to reason through the matter—"
"Insolent whelp!"
The Punishment Hall man's hand flashed toward Lee Yeok's cheek. Or rather — that was his intention.
Lee Yeok stayed planted where he stood, evading the blow with only a slight shift of his upper body.
The man, unable to arrest the momentum of his own strike, staggered several steps. Snickers rippled through the surrounding thieves watching the scene. His face flushed red and mottled.
"Elder, steady yourself, and I beg you to hear me out. What happened last night was legitimate self-defense."
The man could no longer hear Lee Yeok's rambling at all. It was plain as day, even to a fool, that Lee Yeok's manner wasn't polite or humble in the least — it was sheer mockery, grinning and jeering.
The sneers of the onlookers grew louder and louder. Fearing the Punishment Hall was one thing; hating it was another. But being laughed at? That he could not tolerate. Only through fear did one keep rabid scoundrels like these in line with discipline.
The man hurled himself at Lee Yeok in an instant. His two hands became like shadows, whirling around Lee Yeok's body.
This time, Lee Yeok slipped past the attacks with footwork alone.
"Elder, please, have mercy on my life!"
Now the mockery was open and unashamed. Humiliation and fury blurred the Punishment Hall man's vision red. He flipped his right hand, and the short dagger strapped to his wrist sprang into view.
"Die right here!"
For the first time, Lee Yeok's face hardened, resonating with the man's killing intent.
"Elder, even a cornered rabbit will bite and tear. Must I exercise legitimate self-defense once again?"
The man offered no reply. Gritting his teeth, he unleashed a dozen-odd strikes in the blink of an eye.
Yet Lee Yeok evaded every single attack by a margin of one sheet of paper, all while continuing to drone on in that same oily voice.
It couldn't be. The man was a master of late Oh Hyeol-gyeong — a realm that ordinary thieves couldn't even dream of opposing. For the first time, sweat trickled down his face.
"Hyaaah!"
The man let out a battle cry and lunged with his dagger. The blade flickered with cold light, driving straight for Lee Yeok's heart.
In that instant, Lee Yeok's hand moved in a strange, serpentine motion. Just before the dagger found his flesh, he twisted aside to evade even as he raised his right hand. For a fraction of a second, light flashed across his palm.
The man never understood what had happened. When he came to his senses, Lee Yeok was already fleeing into the distance, slipping through the throng of thieves like a single streak of wind.
"You dare run...!"
The words died in his throat. No voice would come. Blood streamed out between the fingers clutched around his neck.
The man collapsed, never fully grasping what had occurred. In his final moments, through his dimming vision, he saw the thieves grinning at him in mockery.
"Serves him right!"
Most of them were temporary hires, not full members of the Dark Shadow Union, and not a single one of them bore any love for the Punishment Hall.
Before the fallen man had even drawn his last breath, Lee Yeok was already out the door of the Union's hall.
"Damn it. Today's losses are brutal. My contract's blown up in my face, and now I've been chased out of the Dark Shadow Union too. This is why temp work is a sorrowful thing. No security whatsoever."
Lee Yeok spat and gazed up at the brightening sky.
"Well, when was my life ever stable? It's not like the Dark Shadow Union's the only option I've got."
Whatever — from now on, he'd simply work alone. He had no further need to follow some nonsensical code or creed. Such was life.
Lee Yeok resolved to make himself scarce before the Union could assemble a pursuit team. As it happened, that barely-lucid young woman had just granted him the 'big score' he'd been yearning for all this time. See this one job through properly, and he'd be free of money troubles for a good long while.