Neither Flying Nor Singing (3)
"Why Hao Mun?"
The next morning, Myohong stopped mid-bite and asked. They had been talking since the night before about the need to seek out Hao Mun.
"Swallow first, then talk. Because we might be able to get business capital from them."
Ak Jun wiped the corner of her mouth with his sleeve as he answered.
"I must still be half-asleep from exhaustion."
Myohong said it a little sheepishly, embarrassed at having been caught looking so disheveled. Jinmyung, for his part, paid it no mind. He himself had spent the past two years looking far worse.
"Hongmae, do you know anything about Hao Mun?"
"Of course. The Beom family has been close with Hao Mun since our peddling days."
"Then can you make contact with them?"
"Well… if I go myself?"
"How could I send Hongmae somewhere that dangerous—"
"Hey. Hold on."
Jinmyung stepped between Ak Jun and Myohong. Both of them turned to look at him.
"That's all well and good, but there's someone else here besides you two. Mind not putting on that voice? You playboy."
"A playboy does that with any woman. I only do it with Hongmae, so it's fine."
"That's right. Jun-rang's sweet voice is so cute."
"Cute?"
"Ahem. Ahem. Save the lovey-dovey for later. We need to meet Hao Mun, so finish breakfast and get ready. Jun — pack your spear, just in case."
"Got it."
When the sun stood high overhead, Myohong led the two men through the winding alleys of the slums. The place they finally arrived at was a shabby little market.
A handful of stalls stood there, but foot traffic was sparse — this was the poor quarter, not the main thoroughfare.
Myohong looked over the stalls, then approached the one at the far end. Masks of the sort children might wear for play were laid out across its surface.
Beside the stall sat the old merchant who sold them. He seemed half-asleep, and did not so much as glance at Myohong.
She ran her fingers over the masks on the stall and asked,
"How's the fashion these days?"
The old merchant answered in a grumble.
"Same as ten years ago."
"And what was the fashion ten years ago?"
"Same as twenty years ago, I expect."
"What about ten years from now?"
"Won't be any different from now."
The old merchant took out a single mask and handed it over, then pointed toward the corner.
Myohong accepted the mask, offered a slight bow, and made her way toward the corner.
"Was that a code just now?"
"Whew — I was so nervous. Yes, it was a code. But the words themselves aren't what matter. What matters is exactly which fingers you use to fiddle with the merchandise when you say certain things."
Around the corner, set into a building wall where no such thing should have existed, hung an elegant paper door. Ak Jun and Myohong both started in surprise. Jinmyung spoke.
"A formation."
"I-I've never seen a formation before."
Jinmyung was startled himself, though he gave no sign of it. He knocked on the paper door and stepped inside. Within, a half-undressed courtesan sat askew at a table.
"What's the matter this early? Our shop usually opens at night."
"I was told Hao Mun operates year-round."
"Well, that's true enough. But at night someone else handles things. I'm rather particular about who I deal with. Why not come back after dark?"
While Jinmyung spoke with the courtesan, Myohong turned Ak Jun's head away.
"Strike while the iron's hot — I'd like to finish our business while we're here. Is there some reason we need to see someone else?"
"First time, are you? At Hao Mun, the person who greets you decides whether your business gets heard or not. And I'm rather particular."
Jinmyung pushed a chair out from the table and sat.
"Talking with someone particular seems like it would move things along faster."
The courtesan sighed, straightened her posture, and sat facing him. Her ample bosom swayed with the motion.
She wore the attire of a back-alley courtesan — bare shoulders, a deep cut across the chest. Ak Jun fixed his gaze on Myohong rather than look.
Myohong watched him with open amusement. Jinmyung, by contrast, kept his eyes steadily on the woman's own.
"What brings you here, customer?"
The courtesan asked with a glint of interest. Long years in the pleasure quarters had taught her how to wield her body as a weapon.
In martial terms, it was an opening stance. When she put her chest forward, there was scarcely a man whose heart did not stir. The man before her might believe he had parried her first move cleanly — but she knew full well that a small ripple had passed through him.
"I want to start a business. Can you lend me the money?"
"A business? Ah — that inn. Inns are thick along the main roads. You're going to run a business out of a slum inn?"
"We'll use that inn ourselves. We mean to start a different kind of trade."
"What kind?"
"One that draws people's eyes."
The courtesan blinked and considered for a moment.
"Outside, pretty words might win you favor. Here, it's better for everyone if you speak plainly."
Jinmyung heard her out, then turned and took the mask from Myohong. Both Myohong and Ak Jun watched him closely.
He had not said a word, on the way here, about what business he intended to start. Jinmyung put on the mask and drew copper coins from his pocket.
"My debut performance. I'm rather nervous."
He set both hands on the table and began rolling a copper coin swiftly with one of them. The coin passed into the other hand.
The courtesan thought he meant to run a shell game and watched his hands. Jinmyung rolled the coin across again.
Ak Jun and Myohong's eyes followed it. Then another copper coin crossed the table in the opposite direction.
They both gasped. The coins multiplied one by one, passing back and forth between Jinmyung's hands.
"If you're planning a shell game, you should've gone to a gambling den— Huh?"
The courtesan broke off strangely. Ak Jun looked at Jinmyung in surprise — and found the mask already gone from his face.
"Face-changing?"
Face-Changing — Bian Lian — was a performance art of Sichuan theater, the region's signature craft of switching masks in an instant so that a single performer could portray a host of characters alone.
The trouble was that under the old nation's rule, the art had been suppressed nearly to extinction. Face-changing performers were vanishingly rare.
"You're offering to sell a performance art? Face-changing would certainly find demand."
"I intend to put on theatrical performances. With face-changing, people's eyes will be drawn for certain. Looking at things, you seem to deal in masks yourselves… What do you say? Care to go into business together?"
The courtesan let out a hollow laugh.
"What if I subdue the lot of you right here and take the face-changing technique for myself?"
The moment the words left her mouth, burly men appeared from somewhere. There were not many of them, but they took up positions before the paper door and cut off any path of escape.
"You don't know the advantages of outsourcing."
Jinmyung said it with a smile. The courtesan smiled back. Looking at her, he went on, still smiling.
"And…"
He took out a copper coin, pinched it between two fingers, and flicked it lightly.
Whoosh! The man by the paper door jerked his head around at the sound of wind. A copper coin stood embedded in the pillar beside the door.
Whoosh! Another coin flew. It buried itself in the same pillar a hair's breadth from the first.
"I proposed a partnership because I consider us more or less equals. Do you not understand why I came here instead of going to the Tang Clan?"
The courtesan studied Jinmyung's eyes for a moment. He was still smiling faintly as he looked back at her.
She signaled the men with a gesture. They stepped aside from the paper door.
"I don't know where you lot crawled out of, but I'll grant you're entertaining. Your request is received — you may go."
"I thought someone so particular would decide alone. Apparently not."
"I can decide alone. But now I need to change shifts and take a bath. A courtesan has to rest during the day if she's going to work hard at night."
Jinmyung gave a short laugh and rose from the table.
"Understood. We'll wait for good news, then."
He drew a mask from his sleeve and set it on the table. Jinmyung led the way; Ak Jun and Myohong followed behind.
When he approached the paper door and paused for a moment, the men tensed. They were thugs well-versed in back-alley brawls, but they fell well short of the martial skill Jinmyung had just displayed.
His next action, however, broke the tension into open laughter. Jinmyung walked over to the pillar and pulled the copper coins free.
When he worked the second one loose, he even grunted a little with the effort.
"Puhah… Mister, you could've just left them stuck there."
"Sorry — but every single coin counts."
Jinmyung recovered both copper coins and stepped out beyond the paper door. Once his party had left the formation, the courtesan rose from the table.
"Find out who those bastards are. Right now. Hurry!"
"Big Sis, aren't they just a performance troupe?"
"That's exactly why you're still stuck at low-level evaluation. The reason the old nation persecuted face-changing performers was because face-changing was the pinnacle of the Disguise Arts."
Only then did the man's mouth fall open and stay that way. Hao Mun was not a martial sect of the Murim.
The reason they had survived even through war was that they excelled at all manner of miscellaneous arts. Skills like the Disguise Arts, the Bone-Shrinking Skill, and the Ghost-Sustenance Method meant little to martial artists — mere side crafts of no great consequence.
But Hao Mun, closer to ordinary people than to the martial world, had refined those crafts into weapons of their own. It was because Hao Mun had aided Dan Jun that he had been able to traverse the battlefields, moving freely between the old nation and the new.
Only a tiny few knew that fact. And even they had never attached much weight to it.