A Good Experience - 2
Na Yerin was a good master, but she was not a good sect leader.
The reason was simple.
She was a superb martial artist—but no administrator whatsoever.
And yet the Hongseong Sect had held on to its present strength thanks to her first disciple, Hong Ryeon. She looked easygoing and hearty, but she was meticulous and talented into the bargain; without her, the sect might long since have collapsed, and Na Yerin might have been reduced to a masterless wanderer drifting through the jianghu.
Having taken as her master a woman who fumbled everything unrelated to the martial arts—downright hopeless, in vulgar terms—Hong Ryeon had endured her fair share of hardship. Yet not once had she ever thought ill of her master, the Sword Saint. To her, quite apart from the matter of master and disciple, Na Yerin was simply the sort of person she herself admired. She had those tenacious eyes of one whose will nothing in this world could bend.
And so Hong Ryeon went on supporting her truly hopeless master.
"Hmmm..."
One part of that support was the liaison work with the Murim Alliance. The Hongseong Sect was an orthodox sect through and through, and it moved by the logic of the orthodox path. With the way things had been unfolding in the murim of late, as the sect's eldest disciple she could hardly stand aside from outside duties. She was already famed in the murim as Nak-ilgeom, the Sun-Falling Sword, counted among the foremost of its female masters—so by the time she had finished the errands that had to be done outside in Na Yerin's stead and returned to the sect, the sun had long since set.
The others would be at evening training, no doubt. She glanced at the bamboo box in her right hand and smiled. The dang-gwa sweets crammed inside would surely bring the smiles back to her sisters, worn out from drills.
Thinking of those smiles was enough to wipe away, if only a little, the day's business at the Murim Alliance. The unpleasant stares. Men who looked at her face with lust in their eyes. Men who bared useless covetousness for the Sword Saint's martial arts. Men who sought to burnish themselves with the Hongseong Sect's prestige. The box would wash away at least a little of the frustration such people had left behind.
"I'm home!!"
She flung open the main gate of the Hongseong Sect and bellowed. Perhaps because the cry was packed with inner power, the sisters gathered for training on the practice yard turned and welcomed her with delighted smiles.
Hong Ryeon raised the bamboo box toward them.
"You've all worked hard at training! Eat these before you wash up! Of course, if all that sweating's got your urges boiling over and you're dying to play with your—"
"Big Sis!!"
Ryu Hyeon—the second disciple of the Sword Saint after herself, who minded the sisters and kept the sect running whenever she was away—let out a shriek.
That girl was wonderful in every way but one: she was wound far too tight. Especially here, where only the sisters who had passed puberty gathered—if no one helped her let off steam properly, she might well cause a disaster someday. They weren't children anymore, after all. Knowing at least the theory of such things would serve them well when they eventually found people they truly loved.
And so, smiling at Ryu Hyeon as she came stomping over in a huff, Hong Ryeon fished a book out of her bag and held it out.
"Hm? What's this? A new martial art...?"
"A truly magnificent work called A Spring Dream Shared in Harmony. A must-read for our era. I got my hands on it."
"...Then what's this mark for?"
"Just a little encouragement to read it soon?"
The tip of Ryu Hyeon's finger pointed at a red circle enclosing the word Spring in red. Hong Ryeon answered as though it were nothing at all, and Ryu Hyeon could only gape—which was precisely why she felt no hesitation whatsoever about seizing the eldest disciple of the Hongseong Sect by the ear.
"Ow, ow, ow! Gently! Gently! I'm your big sister, you know!"
"That's a spring book! A spring book! No—why are you pulling that out when the kids are right here?!"
Ryu Hyeon, her face scarlet as a beet, had been whispering at her ear, but in the end she couldn't take it anymore. Her sharp, stinging palm cracked loudly across Hong Ryeon's back. Pain followed the smack—and still Hong Ryeon only grinned from ear to ear.
"Come on, you're all backed up."
"I am not! Aaaargh..."
What a lie. Hong Ryeon had seen it with her own eyes. That Ryu Hyeon had long been sneaking off with her erotic paintings to play with herself in secluded spots. Even that she had read through every spring book she owned and was already on her third pass.
She'd brought her a brand-new spring book, and this was the thanks she got. Some little sister. Soooo heartless.
But she had no intention of exposing her dear sister's secrets just to torment her. She herself drew a strict line between reality and fantasy, so she felt no need to hide anything—but Ryu Hyeon wasn't built that way. Where there are a hundred people, there are a hundred ways, after all.
"Ahh... anyway, what's that then?"
Only then did Hong Ryeon lift the bamboo box in her other hand for her to see.
"I was going to say something about this anyway. You've all worked hard at training—come take one each."
"Yes, ma'am!!"
The sisters hurriedly began to form a line. Hong Ryeon smiled at the ones gulping as they stared at the sweets, and dropped them one by one into outstretched palms. As more and more sisters received the colorful confections, a warm glow spread across the training yard.
She handed them out to sister after sister, until at last only the youngest remained. They say that of the ten fingers you bite, not one is without pain—yet among her sisters, there was one finger she fussed over just a little more. The youngest, Sayun, stood smiling up at her.
The eyes she loved. Eyes that knew pride, and would not break. Into the palm of her lovely youngest—Sayun, who had those very eyes—Hong Ryeon placed a dang-gwa and flashed a dashing smile.
"There now. Everyone's got one?!"
"Yes!! Thank you!"
"Mm!"
At her firm nod, the sisters began munching away. Some devoured theirs in a single bite; others nibbled carefully, making them last. But every one of them was delighted, and happy. The sight was a pleasure to behold. She popped a dang-gwa into her own mouth, set the rest aside for her master, and said evenly:
"When the Hongseong Sword Formation training twenty-one days from now is over, the entire Hongseong Sect will be going down to the village."
"Why? We already bought everything we needed..."
To her curious sisters, she casually explained what had happened that day. A cheer went up from all of them. They were in the full flush of youth, after all, and craving rich, greasy food. Granted, such fare was hardly ideal for martial training—but Hong Ryeon knew better than anyone that the Hongseong Divine Art was no cheap technique whose progress would falter over a few careless meals.
Amid the celebration, one girl quietly raised her hand. The youngest—Sayun.
"Um... then what about Master? Is Master coming too?"
Even the youngest knew that the Sword Saint rarely attended occasions like this. Every gaze swung to Hong Ryeon. How could they possibly leave their heaven-like master behind and go out to eat? The good mood plummeted in an instant. What was admirable, though, was how hard they all struggled to keep their expressions in check.
So Hong Ryeon grinned and ruffled Sayun's hair roughly.
"I'll be sure to have something prepared, so don't you worry."
My daily routine had changed little. Each morning I rose, called together the servers and servants, and set them to cleaning the inn. By the time the cleaning was more or less done, the inn's cook would come down from his quarters; since he only worked from lunch onward, everyone apparently bought their breakfasts out somewhere.
From where I stood, that was a sorry state of affairs. Naturally so. Money and power were essential to achieving my goals. I certainly had a fair sum on hand at the moment, but that was no license to squander it. Wherever savings could be made, they had to be made. And so I had introduced a breakfast service where none had existed before.
Nothing special to it. Whole-wheat flatbread made with barely any fermentation—Indian-style roti—stuffed with whatever meat or vegetables were left over from the day before, minced, seasoned, stir-fried, and baked inside. It was a tidy way to use up odds and ends, tasted decent enough, and above all was cheap, so of late even the laborers working nearby had taken to stopping in and carrying them off.
"Innkeeper! Three Seomhwa Flatbreads, please!"
"There you go."
Eaten fresh, they were piping hot and delicious; even cooled, they only turned a little stiff—nothing you couldn't eat. Perhaps that was why some people had them wrapped up whole to eat at lunch. Thanks to them, the morning trade was quietly lucrative. With this, I could treat Sayun to dang-gwa again.
"Out of ingredients. That's it."
"We're closed for today!"
"Aw. I was going to buy a few more."
A few of the waiting customers grumbled, but coddling them wasn't part of my job.
"Put away the ingredients that came in before dawn."
In cooking, the cook's skill matters—but the freshness of the ingredients is nothing to sneeze at either. Selling like this every morning, perishables rarely sat around going off, which meant buying new stock daily. And with that, the inn's cooking had only grown better. For a man who needed to turn a profit, it was nothing but good news.
Right, then. Morning routine complete—time to get moving on my personal one.
Ever since Chun-sik's crew had come through the other day, the mood in Seomhwachon had been, to put it kindly, less than good. Unorthodox-path martial artists had been quietly slipping into the village in growing numbers. They weren't committing any particular outrages, but the way they clouded the atmosphere itself was beyond help.
With the morning business finished and the servers and servants resting, I headed for the market. I couldn't rule out the possibility that the village's darkening mood was tied to the Iron Blood Dan's movements, which meant an investigation was in order.
So I was passing through the market as usual, toward the alleys where one went to pick up sinister rumors, when I sensed movement near a stretch of street where people rarely passed.
"What's this?"
I stopped walking and spoke. In the same instant, strapping men emerged from either end of the alley—clubs in some hands, blades in others, and not one of them looked like he'd come for a friendly chat.
"Yu Wol. Right?"
"No? You've got the wrong man. I'm a fellow called Wang Chongyang, just a humble..."
"...Strike him down."
Ah. That line doesn't work on these ones.
Shrugging, I scooped up one of the square wooden slats you'd find lying around any alley. I whirled it this way and that, doing my best to look menacing, but the men only smiled their frosty smiles and closed in—
—Crack!!
"Ugh!!"
That was when it happened. One of the men circling behind me clutched his head and dropped to the ground. The moment the startled thugs turned their heads away from me, I swung my slat at the thinned-out edge of their encirclement.
—Bam!
"Urk!"
With that strangled cry, the man I'd clubbed crumpled—and the one who had just staged a repeat of the scene from moments before came into view. A martial uniform so worn and tattered in places it looked like patchwork rags barely holding together. Long ash-grey hair spilling down to her back. A slender, egg-shaped jawline, skin white as fresh snow. Slightly upturned eyes with an almost provocative tilt, and a smile perched on small, pale-pink lips.
A face I knew.
But far, far younger-looking than the face I was familiar with.
The beautiful girl, a single wooden sword in hand, looked my way—then swiftly snatched up my hand.
"This way!!"
Aiming for the gap where the encirclement had buckled, the girl ran, hauling me along. The little girl—so short the crown of her head didn't even reach my chest—swung her wooden sword without a flicker of hesitation at every enemy that appeared, and I laid about with my slat alongside her, toppling them as we went.
Only after we had escaped the alley and reached the crowded thoroughfare did the tension drain out of her; cheeks flushed, she turned to me with a gentle smile.
Only, that smile—
was not one I knew.
"Are you all right?! That was far too close!!"
She wore a smile unfamiliar to this member of the Sayun Faction—the very gentle smile she would sometimes wear in the game's prologue, when she stood among her martial sisters.
Sayun.
The girl I was supposed to make the protagonist.