Life Is Damn Hard (3)
Third-Rate (6)
Life Is Damn Hard (3)
“Become my adopted son.”
Jin Yigang looked at Je Unseong with a puzzled expression.
The very day his dantian had been declared torn, word had come that the patriarch of the Jecheon Medical Manor wished to see him. He had lived at the manor for five years, yet never once had he exchanged a single word with Je Unseong.
He had no idea why he'd been summoned, but when the patriarch calls, you don't refuse. And then, out of nowhere, the man asked him to become his adopted son. It was so shocking he wondered if he'd misheard.
“Unless I've lost my mind, you just asked me to be your son. Am I right?”
“You are.”
“Do you know anything about me?”
“No.”
“And I know nothing about you, my lord.”
“Even without knowledge, if hearts align, a father and son can be made.”
“You think our hearts will align?”
“Not through sentiment, perhaps. But through money? That might just work.”
“So what you're saying is, you give me money, and I become your adopted son and do something for you.”
“Sharp-minded, aren't you.”
“When a man asks a favor of a dead man walking with less than a year left, it must be something he absolutely needs done.”
“It's precisely because you're a dead man walking that I'm asking.”
“Then my life is on the line, isn't it.”
Otherwise, no one would ask a terminally ill man for anything.
“If fortune favors you, you might live.”
“A year at best, you mean.”
“I'll send a hundred nyang a month to your father.”
“Then my father can drink twice as much and bet twice as big at the tables. Wonderful.”
“Will you do it?”
“Is the hundred nyang a month guaranteed?”
“If you want it notarized, so be it.”
“You'll have to keep paying until my father dies.”
“Naturally. I promise.”
“……I'll do it.”
Jin Yigang nodded.
“……?”
This time it was Je Unseong who was startled.
He hadn't even opened his mouth about what the task would be. And yet Jin Yigang had accepted without asking a single question or raising a single objection.
“I've already been handed my death date. What could I possibly refuse? My biggest worry was my father's old age, and you're offering to solve it. What reason would I have to say no?”
“That may be, but truth be told, I deliberated a long time before summoning you. And yet……”
“What is it I have to do?”
“Join the punitive expedition under the name Je Suryong.”
“The punitive expedition…… you mean the force rooting out remnants of the old empire?”
“Correct.”
“I've never learned martial arts.”
“That doesn't matter. You only need to be counted among them.”
“Where do we depart from?”
“The expedition leaves from Cheondo in six months.”
Cheondo was the capital of the current empire. The martial rebels who had succeeded in their uprising had cast aside the old capital's name and chosen a new one — the Heavenly Capital.
“I'll need training beforehand, I assume?”
“From what I hear, there's a month of training before departure.”
“When do I go to Cheondo?”
“An envoy will come from Cheondo.”
“An envoy?”
Jin Yigang gave him another puzzled look.
“That is all you need to know.”
Meaning: the details were not his to share.
“Understood.”
Jin Yigang nodded and rose to his feet.
“Your quarters have been arranged here.”
“Here?”
“You're my son now. I can't exactly have you sleeping in the Geomseonin barracks.”
“I'd grown rather attached to the old place……”
“All your belongings have been moved. It'll feel just the same.”
“Understood. Although……”
“Speak.”
“I was wondering about the library.”
“You want to read books?”
“Books are my favorite thing in the world.”
“……”
“Am I not allowed in?”
“No. You may enter.”
“Thank you.”
Jin Yigang bowed his head.
“Come in.”
Je Unseong called toward the door.
“Yes, my lord.”
The door opened and two women entered. One of them was Je Hayeong, mistress of the Evil Pavilion.
“What brings you here?”
Je Unseong asked her.
“I heard he was here, so I came to see.”
“See whom? My adopted son, perhaps?”
“Your adopted son?”
“He just became my son. His name is Je Suryong.”
“……”
“Ah, right! Pay your respects. She's your second aunt.”
“A pleasure to meet you.”
“Oppa!”
Je Hayeong turned to Je Unseong.
“Let's talk later.”
Je Unseong's gaze shifted to the woman who had entered with her. And that woman's presence was peculiar.
When a woman was generously built, she usually gave off a soft, matronly warmth first. This woman radiated something bewitching instead — an eerie, serpentine allure.
She looked to be in her late forties, and she was Yuk Daemo, the head maid who managed the manor's serving women.
“Daemo, it's been a while.”
Je Hayeong greeted her with a bright smile.
“I trust you've been well?”
Yuk Daemo said with a bow of her head.
“Quite well.”
“You ought to marry soon too, miss. Any good men out there?”
“You tell me. Find one and introduce him.”
“I'll look around.”
Hem!
Je Unseong cleared his throat.
“Ah―!”
Yuk Daemo turned quickly to him.
“Show him to the room you cleaned earlier. He's my son now, so see that he's well looked after.”
“Of course. Follow me, please.”
Yuk Daemo said, looking at Jin Yigang.
Jin Yigang followed her out.
His new quarters stood about fifty jang in a straight line from the patriarch's office. A stone building inside and out, it looked so old that its outer walls had gone the black of aged lacquer.
“What's carved up there?”
He asked, pointing at the inscription above the gate. He'd slipped into casual speech without thinking.
“Cheonin Stone Lodge.”
Yuk Daemo didn't seem to find his informal tone strange in the least.
“Ah―! Clerical script, is it? Then this building was raised over twelve hundred years ago?”
“Oh?”
Yuk Daemo stared at him with wide eyes.
“What?”
“You're the first person I've ever met who could date a building from its calligraphy alone.”
“Really? ……Oh! What's your name again?”
“Yuk Daemo.”
“Your real name?”
“I don't think so?”
“Hmm. Yuk Naneum might suit you better than Yuk Daemo.”
“Naneum?”
“Don't take it the wrong way — I'm just saying what I feel. Something about you says pleasure houses more than head maid.”
“Hohoho! Is that a compliment?”
“Probably.”
“Thank you.”
“Still, this place doesn't look like anywhere a person actually lives.”
“You're the first to stay here, young master.”
“Nice.”
Jin Yigang smiled.
The two of them went inside.
“There are ten rooms in all. Your things are in the center room. The bed and bedding are all brand new, and I'll be preparing your meals myself.”
“You will?”
“Yes.”
“Hasn't it been ages since you last cooked?”
“Why? Worried I can't?”
“I'll eat anything. No fuss at all. I'm confident I'll enjoy even a sloppy meal, so there's no need for you to worry, Daemo.”
“You sound quite certain I can't cook. Am I wrong?”
“A beautiful woman who also cooks well? That's just plain cheating.”
“Clearly an educated man — you do talk differently.”
Yuk Daemo broke into a wide smile.
“Where's the library?”
“Walk north for about a quarter hour and you'll reach the Medical Library. Every book the Jecheon Medical Manor owns is kept there.”
“So nothing inside these walls?”
“No.”
“Doesn't look like there's a bathhouse either. Where do I wash?”
“There's no indoor bath, but there's an outdoor spring in the rear garden.”
“Don't tell me it's actually a hot spring.”
“It is a hot spring.”
“Ho—ly—!”
Jin Yigang grinned ear to ear.
He stepped into his room. Unlike the gloomy exterior, the inside was cozy — bed, table, chair, and wardrobe arranged along one wall. There were no windows.
Jin Yigang opened the wardrobe.
Five garments gleamed inside, silk so lustrous it seemed to flow. One glance told anyone they were expensive.
“Being rich really is the best.”
Jin Yigang gathered a towel, his underclothes, and an outer robe.
“Going to wash?”
Yuk Daemo asked.
“Today's schedule: wash, eat, stop by the library, then go see the Thousand Martial Statues.”
“What business do you have at Thousand Martial Plaza?”
“You call that place Thousand Martial Plaza?”
“Yes.”
“The fellows there have been having some interesting conversations.”
“Who's there?”
“A thousand and fourteen warriors, that's who.”
“You talk to the statues?”
“They've been talking to me, quite often lately.”
“What do they say?”
Yuk Daemo swallowed without realizing it.
“That's all they can manage. Lower your head. Pump your fist harder. Thrust it forward one more time. Sit with both legs stretched straight. Unfold the Iron-Plate Bridge technique — and so on. All thousand and fourteen of them speak at once, so I can't make out one thing from another, but regardless, they talk to me.”
“And you can sort out what they're all saying?”
“Could you understand a thousand people talking to you all at once, Daemo?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Neither can I. Even with this brilliant brain of mine, no. Anyway, have my bath things ready.”
“I'll bring them myself, so go on ahead.”
“You're not planning to scrub my back, are you?”
“Shall I?”
“Ah — no. No need. I manage fine on my own. As you can see, Daemo, my arms are very, very long.”
Jin Yigang spread both arms wide.
“Understood. Go on ahead, then.”
Yuk Daemo said with a smile.
“I can't wait to see what it's like.”
Jin Yigang ambled off toward the rear garden.
The spring, ringed by a windbreak forest, was bigger than he'd expected. Oval in shape, its long axis stretched some four jang across. The water was milky and opaque — you couldn't see the bottom. Unlike the Cheonin Stone Lodge, which looked abandoned for a century, the spring was immaculately kept.
Flat, generous stones paved the floor and walls so that no muddy silt could cloud the water.
He stripped and stepped straight in. The temperature felt a touch hot at first, but he adjusted within moments. As the warmth enveloped his whole body, a pleasant heaviness settled over him. He remembered that the academy where he'd studied had its own spring too — he'd soaked in it constantly back then.
He'd arrived here and hadn't even managed a proper bath, and yet here his body was, being pampered again. Lucky bastard.
“Nice.”
Wearing a contented smile, he leaned his back against the spring's stone wall and looked up at the sky.
He remembered the county exam, the preliminary round, then the prefectural exam and its follow-up — each stage passed, the competition said to run three thousand five hundred to one. The seat they called the giant's seat. Had he been satisfied there, he might have landed a provincial post.
A post you had to take out loans to buy, granted — but everyone said five or six years of toil would clear the debt in no time.
Perhaps it would have been, if he hadn't taken first place in the prefectural exam. First place had tripped him at the ankle. Once you ranked first there, you couldn't very well skip the final gate — the metropolitan exam.
He'd passed it, gone on to top the palace examination itself.
A full twenty years of his life, invested.
And all those years and all that effort had evaporated in a single morning.
And now he was a dead man walking.
Then I'll simply live one year that feels like a hundred.
Maybe because he'd given up, he wasn't angry. Only, when he thought of what else he might have done with those twenty years, a certain wistfulness crept in.
He could have lived a little more freely, had he……
Life is damn hard.
To shake off the thoughts, he plunged his head deep beneath the water.
One, two, three, four, five……
Counting underwater was an old habit. He'd hold his breath until it clawed at his throat, then lift his head. Once the heat had settled into him, he slowly opened his eyes.
Splash!
Just then he heard someone stepping into the spring. Then a pair of legs appeared — a woman's legs. And she was wearing nothing. It took him a beat to register that fact.
Jin Yigang's head shot up.
“Huh?”
His eyes went wide. Not a pace away, Yuk Daemo sat fully naked in the water.
“Why are you……”
“Look into my eyes.”
A chilling voice flowed from Yuk Daemo's lips. Jin Yigang's gaze lifted to her eyes.
And in that instant, his mind went hollow. His dull, clouded eyes lost their focus entirely.