Hong Chilgong
Cheongwol stood rooted in place, watching the two of them walk away until their figures dwindled into the distance.
She and Seomun Hwi were truly nothing more than friends — yet there was nothing she could do about the way Dang Sohye treated her.
From Dang Sohye's perspective, her fiancé had simply appeared out of nowhere and started flirting with some strange woman.
Did Seomun Hwi even know?
Man and woman.
Even if she lived without choosing either side, she would have to carry this feeling for the rest of her life.
Cheongwol crouched down where she stood and buried her face against her knees.
...It isn't Hwi's fault.
He was the Young Master of the Seomun Clan. Of course he had to look after his fiancée, Dang Sohye, before anyone else.
There was no reason at all to feel this slighted.
And yet, watching Seomun Hwi keep glancing back with that apologetic face as he walked away, Cheongwol nearly called his name without meaning to.
"Haa..."
She let out a long breath.
This childish, ridiculous sulking had to end here.
She was the one who had resolved to live as a man, and she was the one who had drawn the line — that they would remain friends.
What did it matter if she could not walk the ordinary path that others did?
The road ahead of her was a thorn-choked one that no one else could walk beside her anyway.
Just as Cheongwol was about to sigh again, a rough, gravelly voice spoke from beside her.
"What's a young lady doing looking so miserable in the middle of the day?"
She lifted her head. An old man in clothes so shabby they bordered on filthy was looking down at her with a crooked grin.
A beggar...?
She had heard that the inner compound of the Sichuan Dang Clan was a place outsiders — and even branch family members — could not freely enter without special cause.
That a beggar was wandering around here without anyone stopping him made the old man's identity rather obvious.
"I am Cheongwol. I pay my respects to an elder of the Beggar Association."
She cupped her fist and bowed with proper courtesy. The old man nodded, looking thoroughly pleased.
"Hong Chilgong, Law Beggar of the Beggar Association. You're a well-mannered young lady."
They exchanged a few more brief words, after which Hong Chilgong casually asked Cheongwol where one might go for a meal.
In truth, he had visited the Dang Clan often enough to know perfectly well — but he wanted to talk a little longer with this polite junior.
He had also been alone on a lengthy mission of late, and the solitude had grown rather heavy.
"It's just about lunchtime. If you wouldn't mind, Elder, would you care to join me?"
Fortunately, Cheongwol invited him to sit with her without the slightest show of reluctance.
A young woman might well have been put off by a beggar — yet she was not.
"I'd be glad of the company. Come on, then — at this rate my belly skin's going to stick to my backbone."
"Yes. This way."
He nodded readily, and Cheongwol set off with light steps.
Even then, Hong Chilgong had no idea.
That a man who had lived as long as he had was about to witness something he had never seen in all his years.
...Is this a Beggar Association disciple in disguise?
Even Hong Chilgong — a man of considerable appetite himself — found himself faintly stunned by the sheer voracity of Cheongwol's eating.
Her chopsticks moved so fast they left afterimages. Food vanished the moment it entered her mouth, as though she were dissolving it rather than chewing. No sooner did a fresh plate arrive than two more were already empty.
It was not like dining with a young woman. It was like sitting down with five or six beggars at once — a genuinely shocking experience.
When Hong Chilgong simply sat there without eating, Cheongwol tilted her head and asked,
"Didn't you say you were hungry? Ah — is the food not to your taste?"
As if a beggar would dare be picky about fine cuisine.
That was not the problem. The problem was that there was nothing left to eat — a truth he barely managed to swallow back down his throat.
"...Just watching you eat fills me up. It's a pleasure to see a young lady with such a healthy appetite."
What he meant was you're eating my share too — though part of it was sincere.
Young people these days, young women especially, had no appreciation for good food and only picked at their plates.
"Grandfather used to say the same thing. That just watching me eat filled him up."
Even as she spoke, Cheongwol was carefully stripping meat from the bone, and the motion brought her grandfather to mind.
Back then, Grandfather used to cut the meat into easy pieces for me himself.
She should have done the same for him at least once. Instead she had only ever accepted it with childish eagerness — a quiet regret that still lingered.
Perhaps that was why Cheongwol now set a neatly prepared piece of meat carefully into Hong Chilgong's bowl.
Moments ago she had been devouring food like someone possessed. Now this. Hong Chilgong looked slowly from the meat to her face, and Cheongwol gave an embarrassed little smile as she mentioned the story of her grandfather.
"If I've offended you, I'm sorry."
"Offended? Hardly. I'm the one who should apologize — enjoying a luxury that rightfully belonged to your grandfather. I'll pray he finds peace in the Pure Land instead."
"Thank you. Grandfather would have liked that."
Cheongwol nodded with a faintly distant look, and Hong Chilgong quietly ate each piece of meat she placed in his bowl.
Just as he had said — praying for the repose of the grandfather this young woman had spoken of.
...Old friend. I don't know who you were, but you can close your eyes without worry. Your granddaughter has grown into such a fine young woman. You raised her well.
Before long the meal was nearly finished, and Hong Chilgong took advantage of the warm atmosphere to ask,
"I still haven't heard the reason, though."
"Pardon?"
"You were wearing quite the long face earlier. Why don't you tell me what was troubling you."
"Well..."
Cheongwol hesitated, wavering. He offered her a kindly smile — the sort a grandfather might give.
"Most troubles resolve themselves with time, it's true. But some things fester into sicknesses of the heart. Those are burdens, no different from a heavy load — and the only way to lighten them is to set them down before someone else."
"..."
"I swear it upon this knot. I will never speak a word of it to another soul."
To a disciple of the Beggar Association — who took no private wealth — a knot was everything he possessed.
When he invoked even that, Cheongwol began to waver.
Perhaps Hong Chilgong was right.
There had been times when some impossible problem, something she could not solve no matter how she turned it over, had come undone with surprising ease once she asked Soga-yul or Unhak.
So where should she begin? And how much should she lay bare?
Cheongwol parted her lips, hesitated a moment longer, then finally spoke in a heavy voice.
"...It's because of a friend."
Hong Chilgong glanced at Cheongwol, who wore a bitter expression.
So seeing a dear friend walk off with a fiancée had left her feeling complicated enough to look like that.
"Hmm..."
If it had truly been an ordinary friendship, she would never have harbored such feelings.
That she had spoken of it at all meant even she had not properly recognized her own heart.
Hong Chilgong continued to hum thoughtfully, then carefully tested the waters.
"Could it be that you hold romantic feelings for this friend of yours?"
Cheongwol waved both hands in vigorous denial, looking thoroughly appalled.
"Absolutely not. I'm not someone who can hold romantic feelings for that friend."
Hearing that only made things less clear.
She was not denying affection between a man and a woman — she was declaring it impossible from the start.
It was an unbridgeable gap between them, born of the fact that she had left out the part where she had once been a man.
As he sank deeper into thought, Cheongwol gave a faint smile.
"I was just being petty — sulking because it felt like someone had stolen my friend. And I was sitting there looking miserable because I was disgusted with myself for it."
"...Is that so?"
No matter how he turned it over, it did not seem like a problem that could be settled so easily — but if she herself insisted it was so, what more could he say?
On the other hand, Cheongwol's tangled heart truly did feel a little lighter, just as Hong Chilgong had said it would.
Right. Of course it doesn't make sense. How could a man hold romantic feelings for another man?
She had told herself it was just sulking — but some part of her had worried that what she was feeling might be something else entirely.
Thinking of it now, it was almost laughable.
Romantic love meant wanting to hold someone's hand, wanting to be held in their arms, did it not?
She simply wanted to stay by his side for a long time.
She had never once entertained any impure thought of that kind.
...
Just as she was feeling a measure of relief, a memory she had been trying hard to forget suddenly rose from her days at the Kongtong Sect.
—I don't know when it will be, but once your revenge is finished, you must continue the line of the Im family. And if you must receive a man's seed anyway...
From her cheeks to the tips of her ears —
Cheongwol's face flushed scarlet in an instant.
"...!"
Moments ago she had seemed perfectly composed. Now she shot to her feet with a face dyed bright red.
Watching this thoroughly unpredictable young woman, Hong Chilgong became certain.
His guess had been more or less correct after all.
From what he could see, though, the young man in question was one thing — but the young lady before him was rather dense about her own heart.
At this rate, she might keep denying her feelings until she buried them entirely and pretended they had never existed.
Whatever came of it, confirming each other's hearts at least once would spare them regret later, would it not?
And so Hong Chilgong decided — uncharacteristically — to meddle just a little.
"If that's truly how it is, try this once. How about you get engaged yourself — the way your friend has?"