How Would Brother Namgung Know About a Reclusive Shut-in…?
"Young master, please do come visit us again…♡"
With a face somehow even more glossy and radiant than before, the courtesan beamed a contented smile as she saw me off all the way outside the pleasure house.
After what you did to me, you think I'm coming back…?!
I'd told her to stop any number of times, yet she'd completely ignored me and toyed with a customer's rear end until it was a complete mess—and now she had the gall to invite me back. Truly a woman who'd eaten shame for breakfast and washed it down with the last of her dignity. Still, picking a red-faced fight with a courtesan in the red-light district felt beneath me, so I simply swallowed my fury and started for home.
I had just left the pleasure quarter and stepped into the marketplace when it happened.
The hour was already the Hour of the Tiger—somewhere between three and five in the morning. Even in a city that never slept, the deep hours of the night had left the streets nearly deserted and thoroughly bleak.
"You there, young lady in men's clothes… Forgive the abruptness of a first meeting, but might you see fit to part with a portion of the money you're carrying?"
"Hiiik…?!"
The sudden voice of what I guessed was a middle-aged man right behind me made me jump out of my skin. I let out a tiny scream and tried to whirl around, but a rough hand clamped onto my shoulder and locked me in place.
"…Calm yourself. Show me what you have and I'll take only a share, then return the rest."
As he spoke, the middle-aged man pressed something cold and metallic—clearly a blade—against the back of my neck.
"…I have no wish to hurt you, but if you try anything foolish I'll have no choice but to cut you. Handing it over quietly will be better for your health."
"………!"
The feel of steel against my throat drained the blood from my face. Being threatened from a distance was one thing; almost no one could keep from panicking with a blade already at their neck. My reaction was only natural.
"Th-the pouch at my waist… It's in the pouch…"
I was terrified, of course, but I didn't want to confirm that terror for some unknown robber. So I forced my trembling voice down and answered as calmly as I could manage.
Whether my composed act worked or not, the robber's pressure eased a little.
"…Ahem. To think you'd be this frightened… Forgive me. I know this is a lawless thing, but I have my reasons…"
Clink—
Just like that, he took the pouch that held my entire fortune—four taels of silver, everything except the two taels I'd left as emergency funds at the inn—and that was that.
"Wh-who said I was scared…?"
I bristled at the accusation and protested, but he ignored me, rummaged through the pouch, removed a single tael of silver, and tucked the rest right back into my waistband.
"………."
The familiar weight of the silver pouch against my hip left me dumbfounded. That gesture—closer to a shakedown than a proper robbery—suddenly convinced me he wasn't going to harm me, and curiosity, long crushed under fear, came bubbling up.
"Um… what sort of circumstances would drive a man to do something like this…?"
"Nothing worth telling strangers. Well then…"
Once I decided he wasn't some thoroughly vicious criminal, most of the fear drained away. Since he'd already taken one tael, I figured I might as well get the story and satisfy my curiosity.
"W-wait a moment. How about you tell me your story as payment for that one tael of silver? I'll cover the meal or the drinks—come with me to the inn where I'm staying."
I caught the departing robber's sleeve and pressed him again. Now the positions were reversed; the robber looked flustered by my attitude.
"Well, I'll be. A young lady who was shaking like a leaf a moment ago, suddenly this bold. …Haa… Fine. I'll go with you."
"Name's Bu Un."
Sounds like a name that brings bad luck…
The inn where I was lodging advertised itself as open year-round, so even at this hour I could order food—though the selection was limited. After a brief exchange of names, I picked up one of the cookies piled mountain-high on the plate and bit into it. It shattered into pieces in my mouth, flooding it with a sweet, savory flavor.
"Mmm— First of all, let me make this clear: I'm not a young lady in men's clothes. I'm a man."
I'd expected him to be at least a little surprised. Instead the robber—no, the middle-aged man—who was sipping the sorghum liquor I'd ordered and snacking on cookies simply nodded as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Ahem, so I was right. You see, young lady… er, young men like yourself… pretty youths, shall we say… There've been more and more of that sort around lately…"
"Ah…"
Well, Brother Namgung was one, and every single attendant at the inn was male too. …I still wasn't entirely convinced I belonged in "that sort," though.
"If I offended you, forgive me. …And you might try considering other people's situations as well."
"Other people's situations?"
"Think about it. Honestly, until someone shows their underclothes it's terribly hard to tell. If you casually treat a perfectly ordinary young lady like a man, how rude is that? And quite a few of… people like yourself don't mind being called young lady all that much. Probably gotten used to it, I suppose… Anyway, isn't it only natural to choose the form of address that causes no trouble nine times out of ten?"
Hearing that, I finally understood why everyone from the clothing-shop owner to the fortune-teller to the middle-aged man sitting across from me had kept calling me "miss" or "young lady."
"……Haa… Is that so… Well, never mind that. Isn't it about time you told me your story?"
I'd been talking while steadily eating cookies, and the mountain of them had already dwindled to about two-thirds.
"If I go into every detail it'll take forever… As for me, I had one child and made a living as an escort for a security firm—honest work with a blade—and I was steadily putting money away. Then ten years ago I heard a wild rumor that a massive gold mine from the Tang dynasty centuries back had been discovered…"
"…Koff, cough cough! Ah, I'm fine. Please continue…"
His words made me choke on a cookie. Of course they did—he'd just mentioned my family's story.
"Ahem. Anyway, I poured nearly my entire fortune into the family that supposedly held a monopoly on that gold mine… Only it turned out to be a complete scam, and every last coin I'd worked so hard to save vanished in one go."
He drained his sorghum liquor and gave a bitter smile.
"Huu— I debated whether to go meet King Yama in the underworld or set out alone to find those damned swindlers and cut them down… But with a wife and child to think of, I gave up on revenge."
"I see…"
Apparently the story was hard to tell without drink; he kept knocking back sorghum liquor the whole time.
"Fortunately the boom times kept rolling, so I took on… rough work without complaint and managed to keep food on the table. But the problem was my child studied far too well. As if determined to pull the pillars out from under the house, the kid sat for the Imperial Academy exams—and actually passed."
His tone was faintly reproachful, yet the smile on his face was pure pride, completely at odds with his words.
"So you turned to robbery to pay the tuition?"
But… fatherly love or not, a crime was still a crime.
"That's right. Though it's not something I do often… Escort work has dried up lately, so I had no choice. Truly shameful…"
If you know it's shameful, you shouldn't have done it…!
Once I roughly grasped the situation, irritation boiled up in my chest. I was about to call him out on it when—
"Huu, if only I hadn't been scammed back then…"
…that single muttered line from the middle-aged man made the rising anger drain right out of me.
"……If you get caught doing this sort of thing, won't it be a disaster for your family as well?"
"Thirty years of living by the blade have made me an expert at covering my tracks when I take a job. I'll be fine."
"…I could always report you to the authorities…"
"I judged you wouldn't. And if my eyes were wrong… everyone involved will pay the price."
When he said "pay the price," the middle-aged robber's gaze turned ice-cold in an instant. I had no trouble guessing that "everyone" included me.
"I let my temper get the better of me and did something stupid…"
Even lying in bed and rolling around, I couldn't forget the middle-aged man's eyes—the ones that seemed to say, Try anything funny and I'll put you under. He'd mentioned doing "rough work" after being scammed; I could roughly guess what that work had been.
"Huu……"
If there was one lesson from being robbed this time, it was the weight of my family's karma. Just as Buddhism taught, the ghost of that family karma was trailing right behind me, and tonight's events were clearly its doing. Only moments ago a martial artist ruined by my family's schemes had shaken me down for a single tael of silver and threatened me—partly my own fault, yes, but still.
"Haa… Looks like I need at least the bare minimum ability to protect myself…"
After this, the thought of wandering Cheonju alone after sundown had completely lost its appeal. Until Brother Namgung returned, I decided I would hole up in my room at the inn and pass the time reading light novels.