The Biography of Zhuge Liang (3)
Was this how Jiang Taigong felt, sitting with his line in the water and waiting for a fish to bite? I can say with certainty that it was not. Even Jiang Taigong would never have expected a fish to leap clear of the surface just because it had nipped at a single scrap of bait.
But the lure I had cast toward the Jegal Clan was another matter entirely. It was a bait crafted to satisfy the deepest hunger of Clan Leader Jegal Hyeok himself — a golden hook that, once taken, would drag the fish onto dry land in a single thrashing leap.
"Master, what's with the leisurely afternoon? Don't tell me you've given up on writing?"
I was sitting on the veranda, waiting for my fish to arrive, when Soso wandered over with the question.
"Soso. Even the finest writing in the world is worthless if there's no one to read it. And right now, I've put out a bait. Not just any bait, either — a golden one."
"Huh? There you go talking nonsense again. What does writing have to do with bait?"
"There's a connection. More importantly — what time is it?"
"It's been a little while since lunch, so... maybe around three or four?"
"They should be showing up any moment now..."
"Showing up? Who? Master, my sister asked me to run an errand, so I'll be gone for a bit. And don't you dare sit here complaining that you're bored while I'm away."
Flick!
I tapped her lightly on the forehead.
"Ow! What was that for?"
"Soso, when have I ever complained? You're the one who sits around every day whining about how bored you are. And what's with the theatrics? That didn't even hurt."
"Hehehe. Anyway, I'll be back."
Once Soso had gone, I sat alone on the quiet veranda of the guest quarters and stared up at the sky.
"You're late, Clan Leader. At this rate I'm going to turn into an old man."
With nothing better to do after she left, I found myself reciting some old internet meme just to pass the time. I was still killing the hours when I spotted Soso in the distance, running toward me at a full sprint. I barely had time to wonder what was going on.
"Master! Master!"
She came barreling toward me, shouting my name.
"What's the matter?"
"Master, what did you do?! People from the Jegal Clan are here looking for you! They're at the front gate right now, raising a huge fuss about where you are!"
"Yes! The bait's been taken."
Given the reaction Jegal Hyeok had shown me before, I had figured he would come running the instant he finished the book.
"Master! Shouldn't you be hiding? Those Jegal Clan people are tearing the place apart looking for you with fire in their eyes! I don't know what you did, but you need to hide, now!"
"Hide? Why would I hide? I haven't done anything wrong."
"What? Then why are they in such a rush to find you?"
I didn't even have time to answer her.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Footsteps — several pairs of them — echoed through the guest quarters, a place that was ordinarily so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
"This is the gentleman. Young Master Lee."
Branch Manager Baek, who was ordinarily so buried in work at this hour that he never left his office, had come out in person just to fetch someone, and was now introducing me. The moment his introduction ended, a man in scholar's robes stepped forward, clasped his fists, and offered a formal martial salute.
"A pleasure."
It was the first fist-and-palm salute I had ever received, and I found it rather fascinating — but I knew what it meant, so I kept that to myself and mirrored the gesture as naturally as I could.
"The pleasure is mine."
"I am Jegal Cheongyu of the Jegal Clan's Foreign Affairs Pavilion. I have come on the Clan Leader's orders to escort you to the Jegal Clan."
That was when it happened.
"What is the meaning of this?"
A cold voice cut through the air, and Im Seha stepped into view. The usual warmth was gone from his face without a trace.
"Manager Baek. Why are these people here instead of in the reception hall?"
Im Seha's gaze pinned the branch manager like a blade.
"I will have a word with you later."
With that, he turned a grim expression on the men from the Jegal Clan.
"Since when has it been the custom of a house of the Jegal Clan's standing to barge into another man's guest quarters without so much as a word of notice and start hunting for people?"
His eyes settled on Jegal Cheongyu.
"And now you propose to walk off with my guest without so much as a proper conversation with the man himself."
Im Seha's brow drew tight. He was not merely annoyed. He was furious.
"What kind of conduct is this?"
The atmosphere had turned so frigid that even I found myself at a loss for words.
"Jade-Faced Divine Dragon. We acted in haste and have given offense. Please accept our apologies."
Jegal Cheongyu apologized without protest, but Im Seha's expression did not soften in the slightest.
"An apology does not make this a matter that can simply be overlooked."
His voice was ice.
"Young Master Lee is currently a guest of the Cheonpung Merchant Guild. And yet the people of the Jegal Clan have stormed in here searching for him without so much as a word of courtesy to me — the master of this house."
His gaze sharpened and went still.
"I will ask you again. Is this the way the Jegal Clan conducts itself?"
The air grew heavy in an instant. Jegal Cheongyu, too, found himself unable to speak. One wrong word and this was going to explode into a genuine fight.
As a guest of the Cheonpung Merchant Guild, this was not a situation I welcomed. Both the guild and the Jegal Clan were golden lifelines to me. I cleared my throat and stepped in to break the deadlock.
"Young Master Im. I apologize."
The word coming out of my mouth left Im Seha staring at me as if he had no idea what I was talking about.
"The gentlemen from the Jegal Clan are here because I invited them, more or less."
"Invited? Did you say invited?"
Im Seha's eyebrow twitched.
"Yes. To be more precise... I made sure the Jegal Clan would come looking for me."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"I sent the Jegal Clan a small gift."
"Don't tell me..."
Im Seha's eyes narrowed, something clearly clicking into place. He must have been remembering how desperately Jegal Hyeok had tried to bring me over to his side. I gave a short laugh and went on.
"That's right. I gave the Clan Leader something he was bound to come looking for me over. Something he would have no choice but to seek me out for — and urgently."
At that, Im Seha seemed to grasp the situation, and some of the tension left his face. But given the circumstances, the anger lingering there did not vanish entirely.
"Even so, there is such a thing as proper procedure."
"You're not wrong."
I nodded without argument.
"So just this once, would you let it pass — for my sake? If the Cheonpung Merchant Guild and the Jegal Clan fall out because of me, I won't be able to sit easy either."
A brief silence settled over them. It was Jegal Cheongyu who broke it.
"I apologize for having disturbed your peace of mind."
Im Seha looked at him.
"The Clan Leader's orders were extremely urgent, and we hurried accordingly. But we never intended any slight against the Cheonpung Merchant Guild."
Im Seha let out a short sigh.
"For now, I will let it pass out of consideration for this brother's dignity."
But he still had more to say. He fixed Jegal Cheongyu with a hard look.
"That said, I will be raising this matter again in due course."
After a moment of silence, Jegal Cheongyu slowly offered a fist-and-palm salute.
"We are grateful for your forbearance."
The Jegal Clan side seemed equally relieved that things had ended here. And of course they were. They had no intention of picking a fight with the Cheonpung Merchant Guild to the point of open hostility. What they wanted was not a quarrel. It was me.
Once the situation had settled, I was escorted to the Jegal Clan and seated in the Clan Leader's hall to wait for Jegal Hyeok. It was not long before he appeared, a book clutched in one hand.
"A pleasure, Young Master Lee!"
Jegal Hyeok greeted me as if he had been waiting for this moment with every fiber of his being.
"It's been some time, Clan Leader."
"Do you have any idea how long I have been waiting for you?"
"I apologize for not sending word. Matters have kept me rather occupied."
"Apologize? After a gift like this?"
Jegal Hyeok set The Biography of Zhuge Liang down on the desk as he spoke.
"And yet, Young Master — I am extremely, extremely disappointed in you."
"Disappointed? What have I done to disappoint you, Clan Leader?"
He had summoned me in such a tearing hurry, and now he was disappointed? I was still turning over whether I had made some kind of mistake when he went on.
"How could this be all there is?"
He pointed at The Biography of Zhuge Liang.
"Why is there no next chapter?"
I almost laughed to myself.
Got him.
The fish had taken the bait.
"There is no next chapter."
"No next chapter? What do you mean, no next chapter?"
"The fact that you're looking for the next one tells me you enjoyed it. How did you find the book?"
I steered the conversation sideways and waited.
"How did I find it? Until now, whenever I thought of novels, I regarded them as nothing more than cheap pamphlets — martial artists performing techniques that barely deserved the name. But The Biography of Zhuge Liang was different. An eye that reads the currents of the age. An insight that sees through a man at first glance. That is what a novel ought to be."
The praise came pouring out so thick and fast that even I felt a little embarrassed.
"And those sentences! That opening line alone seized me by the throat. In all my years I have never read a first sentence like it."
Well, of course he hadn't. I had written it with the prose of a literary giant in mind — a style any Korean who had ever cracked open a novel would recognize. I had written and rewritten that opening over four days, thinking of that voice again and again, scratching it out and starting over. If he hadn't liked it, I might have been the disappointed one.
"I'm almost embarrassed to hear you speak so highly of it. Unfortunately, there really is no more. I don't believe I'll be able to give you the next part."
"What do you mean? It says 'Chapter One' as clear as day. If there is a first chapter, there must surely be a second!"
"A writer has to eat, Clan Leader. I can only write the next part if the book actually sells."
"If the book sells? What is that supposed to mean? Are you telling me this book is not even available on the market? How can people have such poor taste?!"
Jegal Hyeok seemed to have assumed that The Biography of Zhuge Liang was a novel already being sold in bookshops.
"No, Clan Leader. Contrary to what you may think, this book has not yet been shown to the world."
"What do you mean?"
"I only just finished writing it a short while ago."
Jegal Hyeok stared at me, wide-eyed.
"So that's why the scent of fresh ink still clung to the pages... Well. Who else but you could have written a book like this?"
"I wanted the contents of this book to be known, so I went to a printing house."
I cut straight to the point.
"The cost of printing, however, was beyond anything I had imagined. It was not a sum a private individual could afford."
"I can well believe it."
"Which is why I have come to you, Clan Leader."
"Come to me? You mean...?"
"Yes. I have come to ask you to become an investor in this book."
"Hrm... It is a book that contains the story of our ancestor. I have no wish to refuse you. But the timing, unfortunately, could not be worse."
"What do you mean by that?"
Timing? Had something gone wrong within the Jegal Clan? I asked.
"Ahem. It is rather embarrassing to admit, but I was away from the clan for a long stretch, and the elders have taken a rather dim view of me for it. These days they interfere with every last thing I try to do. So I'm afraid it will be difficult at present."
That wouldn't do. I could be thrown out of the Cheonpung Merchant Guild at any moment. And clinging to the Jegal Clan instead? That would be like a graduate student locking himself in a lab and throwing away the key. I played my strongest card.
"Clan Leader! Do you know what people in the martial world are saying these days? They say the Jegal Clan is inferior to the Sima Clan!"
"What did you just say?!"
Jegal Hyeok's head snapped toward me, his eyes blazing with fury. But it wasn't untrue. I had asked around, and in every ranking people gave, the Sima Clan sat a rung above the Jegal Clan.
"Then shouldn't you show them? That the Jegal Clan is not a house to be compared with the likes of the Sima Clan!"
I poured everything I had into the speech and pressed on.
"Clan Leader! The story I told you before — of Sima Yi, brought low by Zhuge Liang! That story will be in this book. And stories even greater than that!"
"Even... even greater?"
"Yes. Aren't you curious? To see the ancestor of the Sima Clan brought to his knees by the ancestor of the Jegal Clan!"
The Clan Leader's expression went hazy in an instant.
"Picture it. The name 'Zhuge Liang,' spreading across this vast Central Plains. The worth of the name 'Jegal,' risen so high that the Sima Clan will seem like nothing at all!"
"Ahem...! Is that... truly possible?"
"Ask the blood in your veins, Clan Leader — the blood of the Jegal Clan. Ask it whether there was once a man named Sima Yi who lost to Zhuge Liang. And it will answer you: a common coward who fled because he feared the name 'Jegal' is not even worth remembering."
"Kh-hngh!!"
Jegal Hyeok's face went slack and dreamy, like a weak-willed man falling under a devil's whisper, and he drifted away on the wings of his own imagination.
"Clan Leader. Can you not hear it? The name 'Jegal,' ringing out across the Central Plains."
When I finished, Jegal Hyeok closed his eyes as if he could actually hear that name echoing across the continent. A moment later he opened them again and looked at me.
"I will find a way to persuade the elders."