Reminiscence - Cheonseokyanghwanheojeonggong (1)
After my mother died, I imagine you can guess how I was treated at Manhong Pavilion.
From that very night onward, nameless guests began drifting in and out of my room.
The women who paid my price wanted to purge their long-hoarded, obscene cravings by using my body.
If I refused their commands or brushed their hands away, they resorted to every means to rape me by force.
They bound my arms and legs, or fed me powerful aphrodisiacs that blurred my vision, then rolled with me across the bed until they were satisfied.
For a time I felt as if I were losing my mind. I clenched my teeth and thrashed with everything I had. No matter how soiled my body became, if I rejected the act in my heart, I believed I could at least protect my soul and sanity.
But after it happened several times, one fact stood out with painful clarity: no amount of resistance or escape would change anything.
That was when it began.
I stopped refusing the acts the guests demanded and started thinking of ways to satisfy them instead.
At first I simply hated being forced. The moments when my clothes were stripped away and my drug-fogged mind was violated felt like death, so I desperately searched for ways to please the customers without joining our bodies.
Before long I could smile on command, and the false declarations of love rolled off my tongue with surprising ease. Even when bile rose in my throat, I learned to hide it and spin sweet words.
As practice and experience piled up, so did my skill at handling women.
Where to press my lips, where to brush my fingertips to make them cry out and writhe.
What tone of voice, what expression would melt their hearts like snow.
How to refill their wine cups, what whisper to breathe against their ears while loosening their sashes.
It felt awkward at first, of course, but thanks to the snow-pale skin and flower-like beauty my parents had given me, the women would flush crimson the moment I gently captured their wrists, their faces already dissolving with pleasure.
Beyond my face, what truly melted them were the arts I had secretly watched as a child—dance, song, and the guqin my mother had taught me.
When I sat in the center of the room, quietly plucking the strings while humming a melody, or danced with glimpses of skin flashing through loose robes, the guests who had come only to relieve their lust would gradually fall silent. They held their breath and stared at me in a daze as I played.
Once I realized I could enchant them without even sharing my body, performing these arts became the only moments I could truly be myself amid those hellish days.
Even if I plucked the strings without thought, most women would already be drinking with half-lidded eyes. Sometimes, pleasantly drunk, they would declare themselves satisfied and press far too much money into my palm.
I grew skilled at wearing the mask of a smile and accepting guests. No—I had no choice but to master it.
The moment someone opened the door to my chamber, I lifted the corners of my mouth first.
A polite greeting followed, then tightrope-walking jokes that hovered between danger and seduction. If they wished, I would whisper love into their ears; if not, I simply played the guqin and kept them company through the night.
Once I grew accustomed to it, satisfying women was not so terrible.
Occasionally a guest would pity me and offer empty comforts—“Such talent shouldn’t be wasted here” or “In your next life, be born into a good family.” Even those hollow words became a twisted sort of solace.
As time passed, I transformed into a bewitching flower. Lonely widows, bored maidens, wives left alone while their husbands traveled—I could make them all sigh with longing simply by whispering insincere love in a low voice and lightly grasping their wrists.
Before my bed the moonlight glows—
Is that frost upon the ground?
I raise my head to view the bright moon,
Then lower it, longing for home.
And through it all I realized something: the much-sought-after pleasure of the clouds and rain was not nearly as extraordinary as people claimed once you experienced it yourself.
But just as I was somehow enduring that period, the master of Manhong Pavilion shattered it without hesitation.
Having received a fortune that would never return a single coin to me, he began sending male guests to my room as well.
They reeked of liquor and sweat, and they toyed with my body with a violence the women could never match.
They did not treat me as a person. Their sticky gazes slid over me as if inspecting purchased goods. Then, without a word, they seized and twisted whatever their hands could reach.
If I pulled away or pushed them off, curses and brutal violence answered.
After a single guest, my body would be covered in livid bruises. There were many days I fainted from exhaustion. Dealing with them was overwhelming; I wondered if human desire could truly be this crude and filthy. It felt as though my soul were being devoured.
The determination to grit my teeth and endure soon reached its limit. In the end I knelt before the pavilion master, weeping and begging him to stop.
He merely sighed as if helpless and repeated the same words he always gave.
While his mouth spoke those words, his hands busied themselves counting silver inside the chest, never once glancing at my expression.
After handling more of those unwanted guests than I cared to count, I happened to look into the mirror one day and my heart plummeted.
The face reflected there was still clear and beautiful.
Yet somehow my mother’s face from her final moments overlapped it—the expression she wore as she died, unable to smile or cry, her eyes filled only with worry for me.
So I made my decision. I would escape this damned hell.
Whether I froze to death, was beaten to death, or starved to death outside, if I could live as myself, any death was acceptable. I simply had to leave this place.
That was the night I hardened my resolve.
When a pitch-black night without stars or moon descended, I gently moved the arm of the man who held me while snoring loudly and rose from the bed.
In the bundle clutched to my chest were a few of my mother’s ornaments I had prepared beforehand, along with a mask. My heart thundered as if it would burst while I carefully slid the door open and stepped outside.
I held my breath and crept barefoot down the hallway. Afraid of any creak, I felt my way along the floor until I reached the back door used only by the kitchen servants, opened it, and fled into the darkness.
For several years afterward I wandered with my mother’s silver mask pressed to my face, going wherever my feet carried me.
Inns, taverns, or the open road when nothing else was available.
To earn money I lingered near stages, singing, dancing, and playing instruments.
Since Manhong Pavilion had been one of the most famous brothels in the Central Plains, the skills I learned there alone let me survive.
Yet the world outside the brothel—especially its adults—was mostly filthy garbage.
A child with nothing, untrained in martial arts, could expect only two fates from jaded grown men: to be used or to be toyed with.
Those who occasionally took pity on a homeless boy and brought him home would transform the moment they saw my face behind the mask, forcing me to run away again.
Therefore I never considered settling anywhere, nor did I have any desire to.
If I kept wandering until my strength failed, I would simply collapse and die.
With that thought tucked inside my heart, I roamed until the day I encountered an unexpected stroke of fortune.
Looking back now, my life—which had already been twisted before I was even born—only began to spiral into true madness after that day.
In a shabby inn in Luoyang filled with raucous laughter, the sound of shattering wine cups, and the stench of pungent oil and sour liquor, I sat on a corner stage wearing my mask. Amid the drinkers I silently played the guqin and sang a song no one heard.
It was a low-grade instrument compared to the one I had used at Manhong Pavilion—almost embarrassing—yet while I played, the surrounding noise faded from my ears.
It felt peaceful.
Like the melody flowing from these strings, like the song itself, I wished my life would hurry along and reach its end.
Fortunately the innkeeper had given permission today; after the performance I could sleep in the stable despite the cold wind. It was better than spending another night among the Open Beggar Sect’s beggars, so I allowed myself a small measure of relief.
“Hey, you masked bastard over there!”
A hulking drunk reeking of alcohol staggered onto the stage.
