Munch, munch, munch!
A little mouth worked busily.
A-ri ate her meal with relish and gulped down her medicine in one go.
“Hm?”
As A-ri lowered the bowl, she spotted a drop of medicine gathered on its rim just before it fell.
‘What a waste that would be!’
Lick!
A-ri quickly stuck out her tongue and caught it.
“That was close!”
Big Brother worked so hard to provide her meals and medicine. How could she nearly waste any of it?!
Only after inspecting the bowl so thoroughly that she looked ready to lick it once more did A-ri put it down.
The fishy bitterness churned her stomach, but she pressed her palm firmly against her chest to force it down.
“Hurry up and make A-ri healthy, so Big Brother won't have to work so hard. Hurry and become A-ri's blood and flesh. Make A-ri grow tall and gain weight and become a plump little pig.”
A-ri was thin and small and always being kicked around, so she thought Big Brother would only stop worrying once she grew up quickly.
“Big Brother says we're too young, and if we leave the escort bureau, he won't be able to get A-ri medicine or feed us, so we have to stay here somehow.......”
A-ri vigorously shook her tiny head from side to side.
“We can't stay at the escort bureau.”
She muttered through pouting lips.
“Big Brother can't smile here. He's always sad. The bad people will keep bullying him.”
A-ri knew very well how much her uncle and aunt and her two cousins envied and hated Big Brother.
So as quickly as possible.......
Big Brother had to leave this place.
A-ri sprang to her feet.
She passed through the main gate and approached the beggar man sitting in plain sight beside it, basking in the sun.
He showed little sign of caring even when A-ri crouched beside him.
Perhaps it was because A-ri had visited him constantly since they first met.
Or perhaps he simply had no interest in his surroundings.
“Big Brother is kind.”
When she mentioned Big Brother, A-ri felt his gaze turn toward her.
“There's nothing Big Brother can't do.”
“.......”
“Big Brother.......”
As she chattered without pause, A-ri stole glances at the pitch-black eyes visible through his tangled hair.
“What is it? Is there something else you want to say?”
“Not really... It's just that your eyes are so pretty.”
“My eyes?”
“It's strange. They said you were human trash. Then your eyes shouldn't be pretty.”
All the human trash A-ri had seen had been like that.
Their eyes were murky and unpleasant, as though covered in moss.
But this man was not like them.
“They're pretty like Big Brother's.”
Perhaps amused to hear that he resembled her elder brother.
With a quiet chuckle, the man answered in a far gentler voice.
“Then perhaps I am not human trash.”
A-ri stared at him, then cautiously took hold of his sleeve.
If this man truly was not bad, she had something she wanted to say.
If he really had left Big Brother and Mother only because of unavoidable circumstances.......
And if bad luck was the only reason he had returned so late, then there was something she had to tell him.
A-ri was about to speak when someone called her name from the main gate.
“Miss A-ri, were you here?”
The man emerging with a crowd of escort bureau martial artists behind him was Gu Sang-gi, the escort bureau's Chief Administrator.
A-ri flinched when the Chief Administrator, who ordinarily did not so much as look at her, greeted her.
That was because A-ri, an unprecedentedly brilliant six-year-old, realized that the Chief Administrator was not treating her with respect but merely using her to trample the man beside her.
A-ri looked between the man and the Chief Administrator, then stepped forward.
Whether the man was human trash or not, she needed him, and was he not Big Brother's real father?
She had to protect him!
“What do you want?”
A-ri glared.
‘How amusing.’
From behind, Wi So-baek watched the little fox yip at them without even knowing what she was trying to protect.
After they argued several times, a vein rose on the Chief Administrator's forehead, as if he had grown angry.
“This is not a matter in which Miss A-ri should interfere! And that man should be grateful to the Grand Madam and the Young Escort Bureau Master, who have shown mercy and agreed to let him enter the escort bureau despite his claim to be Young Master Seon-woo's birth father!”
The child's shoulders jumped every time the Chief Administrator raised his voice.
“Hic!”
When the startled child began to hiccup, Wi So-baek placed his palm against her back.
Warm energy flowed into her. Her eyes widened, and she turned to look at Wi So-baek.
“So you should come inside too. A father and son reuniting in the street? It would make it seem as though our escort bureau had scorned you for your lowly status.”
Of course, Wi So-baek was not listening to a word the Chief Administrator said.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. That's amazing. What did you just do? Something warm went whoosh, right up.......!”
The child flapped her arms to mimic something soaring upward, and Wi So-baek patted her head.
“Are you ignoring me right now?!”
Chief Administrator Gu Sang-gi shouted at Wi So-baek and A-ri, who were talking among themselves as though he were not there.
Wi So-baek moved the gaze he had fixed on the child to Gu Sang-gi beyond her.
“Gasp!”
For some reason, Gu Sang-gi sucked in a hollow breath at the pain stabbing into his chest.
Just as he thought, ‘What is this?’
“Why is everyone doing this? A-ri, why are you over there again?”
Seon-woo appeared.
“Big Brother!”
A-ri turned toward Seon-woo.
Gu Sang-gi rubbed his suddenly untroubled chest and tilted his head, wondering whether he had imagined it.
Then he remembered his task and spoke again.
“The escort bureau has prepared to receive you. Come inside.”
“Chief Administrator!”
Seon-woo tried to stop him, but when the Chief Administrator looked at him coldly, Seon-woo pressed his lips shut.
Because the Chief Administrator managed the escort bureau's household, Seon-woo often found himself having to plead with Chief Administrator Gu for favors.
Wi So-baek clicked his tongue at the sight of Seon-woo.
He rose from his seat.
“Eek!”
Yet that single movement startled Chief Administrator Gu and the escort bureau's martial artists who had followed him, making them retreat.
Then they looked bewildered, unable to understand why they had reacted that way.
“Th-that man is taller than I thought.”
“He has a solid build.”
They watched one another, invented plausible explanations, and accepted them.
They could not admit that they instinctively felt threatened by a man who had looked like a beggar and languished outside another escort bureau's main gate for more than ten days.
Wi So-baek paid them no mind.
He was already striding toward the main gate.
When Wi So-baek stopped and looked back, Gu Sang-gi felt relieved.
He thought Wi So-baek had at least not forgotten him, the Chief Administrator who had delivered the invitation.
But he was wrong.
“Seon-woo, A-ri, come here.”
The person Wi So-baek called was not the Chief Administrator.
Seon-woo's face stiffened further at his gesture, but he could not remain where he was forever.
Led by A-ri's hand, Seon-woo went to Wi So-baek's side.
Only after passing through the main gate with both children did Wi So-baek turn to the people left standing forlornly outside.
“You invite a guest, yet no one comes to receive him. I cannot help questioning the standards of Huaming Escort Bureau.”
At the blatant mockery, the Chief Administrator ground his teeth.
‘He is acting as if someone like him were truly an honored guest!’
The Chief Administrator vowed to expose every detail of the man's true identity, then make him pay dearly for failing to know his place.
Wi So-baek was guided to the inner residence, where only the escort bureau's direct family lived.
He agreed to see Seon-woo and A-ri again at mealtime, then headed to the bathing room attached to the quarters assigned to him.
Attendants were already waiting inside the bathing room.
When Wi So-baek naturally spread his arms, the attendants inside became flustered and hesitated instead.
But when Wi So-baek furrowed his brow and swept his gaze across the room, they started and hurried behind him.
Two people undressed Wi So-baek from either side in turn, after which he moved toward the wooden tub wearing only one layer of thin cloth.
He immersed himself in the hot water, leaned his upper body against the sloped inner wall of the tub, and draped his arms over its sides.
When he tilted his head back, his tangled hair spilled over the outside of the tub.
Several attendants approached and began washing and grooming his hair.
Yeo-hwa always claimed that hair so glossy and black needed no care, yet called it her pleasure to apply the finest oils and comb it meticulously every time. That hair quickly returned to its proper state.
After washing his face and body, Wi So-baek stepped outside, dried himself, and put on the new clothes the Chief Administrator had hung up. The figure of a noble young master emerged, leaving everyone around him unable to close their mouths in admiration.
“Wow.”
“What in the world happened? Why was someone like him sleeping outside looking like that?”
After fastening his belt and finishing his attire with ornaments, the attendants stepped back and whispered among themselves.
His first bath in a long time left Wi So-baek feeling generous enough to overlook a little commotion.
Wi So-baek sat languidly, drank tea, and rested. When the time came, he went outside.
“Impossible.”
“Is that man truly the beggar?”
The direct members of the escort bureau's family sat at a large round table laden with every delicacy. When they saw Wi So-baek, they forgot their manners and cried out.
Even those who had witnessed the transformation in real time could not suppress their astonishment. How much more startling must it have been for those who suddenly saw a man changed from one extreme to the other?
Moreover, his appearance alone was not the issue.
The aura he exuded, his movements in accordance with etiquette, and his every gesture were so proper and dignified that he might have been a member of the imperial family.
“Could he have been a child of some extraordinary family?”
When Escort Bureau Master Lee Chu-pung spoke in puzzlement, his wife, Ban Ga-jin, shook her head.
“Why would such a person have looked like a beggar?”
They had given him excessive treatment in hopes of making him feel intimidated, yet how absurd it had been to receive reports that the attendants were instead terrified they might make a mistake.
“Perhaps he once was, but he cannot be any longer. That must be why he appeared here looking like that.”
Ban Ga-jin looked at Wi So-baek as though asking if that was not so.
Wi So-baek tapped the table with his index finger and spoke.
“What if I was, and what if I was not? What does it have to do with any of you?”
The air above the table turned cold in an instant.
“We must know that before deciding whether to acknowledge you as the father of my precious nephew, must we not?”
When Lee Chu-pung retorted, Wi So-baek raised one eyebrow.
“A precious nephew.”
He looked at Seon-woo, who sat beside him with his head lowered like a criminal.
“Is this how you cherish him here? You crush his spirit, dress him in shabby clothes, then make him help with household work at an age when he should be learning?”
CLACK!
Lee Chu-pung loudly set down the chopsticks in his hand.
“You abandoned your own child and your woman, yet now you presume to lecture us about your child?”
“Is that not why I mean to do better? Even if I had my reasons, I was still wrong, so I intend to make amends from now on. All the more reason for me to point out anything troubling I have seen here.”
“It seems even a man like you has something to say as a father.”
“I have something to say precisely because I am his father. Besides, am I the only unworthy father? The former Escort Bureau Master was hardly a good father either. If he tore apart a family that could have been happy, he should have protected the children regardless of the circumstances. Is that not so?”
Wi So-baek revealed without hesitation that their father, the former Escort Bureau Master, had been involved in the past wrongdoing.
Se-jin might have been inflexible and frustrating, but what could the fool possibly have done in that situation?
As far as Wi So-baek was concerned, the entirety of Huaming Escort Bureau could be dragged through the mud.
He could not stand to watch his younger brother bear the blame alone.
More importantly, was Wi So-baek himself not now standing in his younger brother's place?
The story seemed unexpected even to Seon-woo, who lifted his head without realizing it.
“I was wondering what to do because I needed a chance and time to speak with Seon-woo. Thank you for inviting me like this.”
Since matters had come to this, Wi So-baek said, he would gladly accept their hospitality.
And he truly intended to do exactly that.