Day broke.
When Wi So-baek rose and made his presence known, the people waiting outside entered to attend him.
Once his preparations were complete, Wi So-baek stepped outside and spoke naturally.
“Cheol-sam.”
Yu Cheol-sam, who had hidden nearby just in case, lamented.
“I knew it!”
It seemed the man really had made him his personal errand runner!
Yu Cheol-sam seethed and fumed inside.
The fact that he had waited since the first light of dawn with his eyes wide open in case he was called and failed to answer already meant he had all but accepted his new station.
But he had no time to grumble for long.
“Cheol-sam.”
“Yes!”
Yu Cheol-sam hurried out and stood before Wi So-baek.
“Go see what the children are doing and get them ready to go out. There is much we need to buy.”
Yu Cheol-sam had also heard all about the man who had arrived at Huaming Escort Bureau dressed as a beggar and without a penny to his name, so he wondered how the man intended to buy anything, but did not ask.
He was an incredible master, after all.
‘He will manage somehow.’
Yu Cheol-sam hurried toward the place where Young Master Seon-woo and Miss A-ri were staying.
“Really? Really?”
“Yes. Choose anything you want.”
Wi So-baek spoke to A-ri, whom he carried in his left arm, then looked down to his right.
He also spoke to Seon-woo, who kept fidgeting as he tried to pull his hand free from Wi So-baek's grasp.
“You too. We must buy a martial arts uniform for you to wear at the martial arts competition, and your wooden sword is too cracked to use, so it must be replaced. Your shoes should also have soles reinforced with thick leather so it will not hurt even if you step on a sharp stone.”
The longer Wi So-baek spoke, the redder Seon-woo's cheeks became.
“I am not a child. I am fine.”
When Seon-woo spoke bluntly, Wi So-baek shook his head.
“Everything you just said is wrong. Seon-woo, you are a child, and nothing becomes all right merely because you are not one. People simply grow accustomed to enduring as they age.”
The man saying this looked as though he had never endured anything in his life, leaving Lee Seon-woo no choice but to ask.
“...Were you like that too?”
“Hmm.”
Wi So-baek looked troubled, but soon smiled.
“I have rarely endured anything, so I still find it exceedingly difficult. But now I know what that feeling is.”
His heart felt torn apart with grief, and the knowledge that there was nothing he could do seemed enough to drive him mad.
“So, Seon-woo, I do not want you to grow any more accustomed to such things. Have you not already endured more than enough?”
“.......”
Seon-woo gave no answer.
But he stopped trying to put distance between himself and his father.
Wi So-baek was pleased.
“For you and me to meet like this, we had to lose a great many things. And so, battered as we are when we finally meet, perhaps we cannot be called a perfect father and son. But a father and son who learn by giving each other, one by one, the things we lack—you, unused to receiving, and I, clumsy at giving—does not sound so bad to me.”
What do you think? Wi So-baek asked while meeting Seon-woo's eyes.
“...Clothes... Did you not say we were going to buy them? A-ri is waiting.”
Rather than answer the question, Seon-woo quietly changed the subject. He seemed more awkward than displeased.
It had been wise to make it clear that his father had not abandoned him and his mother, but that his maternal grandfather had forcibly separated them.
That seemed to have softened the boy's greatest resentment somewhat.
An opportunity mattered in everything.
No matter how insignificant, it could become the key that reversed a situation.
“Yes, let us go. Choose your things as if you mean to sweep this entire street clean.”
“But we're poor.”
When A-ri voiced her concern, Wi So-baek took a neatly folded sheet of paper from his robes and waved it lightly.
“That isn't money......?”
“It is better than money. It is light and convenient, and it lets us buy more.”
Wi So-baek gave a simple explanation, but Yu Cheol-sam, who saw it from behind, was gaping.
‘How much is that?’
From what he glimpsed, the amount appeared to exceed one thousand taels.
But what astonished him even more was the bank that had issued the bank draft.......
It came from Yangshan Bank, said to possess the finest credit beneath heaven.
When counterfeit bank drafts appeared, Yangshan Bank formed its own pursuit squads and exacted vengeance before even the authorities could act, so counterfeit bank drafts were exceedingly rare, and forging one was no easy feat.
That was because the emblem and dye used on the bank drafts issued by Yangshan Bank were extraordinarily distinctive.
‘If it is not a forgery, where did something like that suddenly come from?’
Could it be......?
Yu Cheol-sam recalled the day that man had left, saying he would be back after a brief outing.
The place he had said he was going to then was surely......?
The instant the name of the clan Yu Cheol-sam himself had mentioned surfaced in his mind.
Yu Cheol-sam quietly buried it.
He knew nothing about this.
Somehow, that seemed the wisest choice.
Unlike Yu Cheol-sam, who clutched his shrinking heart, A-ri was simply fascinated.
“Wow!”
When A-ri showed interest, Wi So-baek placed the bank draft in her hand.
She had only recently begun learning her letters with her big brother and did not know many characters, but even A-ri could sense it.
Sniff, sniff!
“It smells good. This is good. Very good.”
A-ri flared her round little nostrils as she held the bank draft so close she seemed about to bury her small face in it.
“Do you like it that much?”
“If we have this, Big Brother won't have to listen to mean things while asking for A-ri's medicine and food! Big Brother won't be called an extra anymore, and he can pay money to attend the martial academy! We can give Big Brother lots of good things! This is the best!”
The most worldly six-year-old in existence shouted.
Wi So-baek asked languidly.
“It seems our Seon-woo has suffered a great deal.”
“Yes! Yes! Very, very much. There were lots of bad people!”
“Who was bad, and what did each of them do?”
He already knew the story, of course.
Even so, she should submit a clear and detailed list.
A-ri flinched under the strange pressure, but when Wi So-baek gently softened his eyes, her lips quickly rounded and she giggled like any child who adored shiny things.
Then, just as she was about to start chattering without realizing it, Seon-woo stopped her.
“What color clothes does A-ri like?”
“A-ri? A-ri likes yellow. The butterfly was so pretty, fluttering around. A-ri wants to be a butterfly too!”
When A-ri's attention immediately wandered elsewhere, Wi So-baek clicked his tongue inwardly.
In any case, was this not the first time all of them had gone out together?
Wi So-baek spoke to A-ri, who still held the bank draft tightly even as she talked with her big brother.
“Why must you be only a yellow butterfly? Buy clothes in every color you wish—a yellow butterfly, a white butterfly, a pink butterfly—and let A-ri pay for them.”
“Me?”
With this bank draft?
Was it all right for her to handle something so important?
When A-ri blinked her huge eyes, Wi So-baek nodded.
“Yes. I have never personally bought anything with my own money either, so would you do it in my place?”
“You're an adult, but you've never done it even once?”
When she marveled at how that could be possible, Wi So-baek answered.
“Other people did it for me back then too.”
“Then A-ri will do it this time! A-ri is good at it! Long, long ago, A-ri went to the market with Mother once and did it!”
A-ri raised her shoulders proudly.
“I thought you would be. Then I shall trust only A-ri.”
“Yes!”
A-ri beamed.
A-ri was so excited that she did not seem to find anything particularly strange about the conversation, but the puzzlement of Seon-woo and Cheol-sam, who had been listening with her, only deepened.
It did not sound as though he was merely saying it.
What kind of person could live a life without ever paying for an object?
Either a true beggar who had never possessed anything of his own, or someone so precious and exalted that he had never once rolled a coin across his fingertips.
The man's identity, probably the latter, only grew more mysterious.
Was that not why Huaming Escort Bureau had left alone a man they believed had never learned martial arts?
They wanted to know whether he had some hidden move in reserve and, if so, what it was.
“Over there! Over there!”
Perhaps A-ri had found a shop she liked, for she pointed somewhere with her forefinger.
Wi So-baek entered the shop-lined street with the children.
And that day, central Taiyuan welcomed an infant God of Wealth.
***
“Estate Master.”
“What is it?”
Yun Seol-hyeong, Yun Gi-hyeong's closest aide and cherished younger brother, came to see him in the estate master's office at Yun Estate in Shanxi.
“A bank draft worth three thousand taels has disappeared from the vault.”
“Hmm.”
“Could it be......?”
He did not believe that his elder brother, who had never caused an incident in his life, would have slipped it away. But the vault was known only to his brother and himself, so what else could he do?
He had no choice but to ask.
“I used it.”
“Elder Brother!”
Even for Yun Estate, a bank draft worth three thousand taels of silver, and one issued by Yangshan Bank with its supreme credit, could not possibly be insignificant.
“Seol-hyeong.”
“Yes.”
“I will have to make a trip to Taiyuan in three days.”
Shanxi was long and narrow from north to south, and Taiyuan and Yangquan lay side by side near its waist. The distance between them could hardly be called great, but neither was it ever close enough to announce an outing so abruptly.
“What business do you have in Taiyuan so suddenly?”
“I was invited, so I should go.”
“Who in Shanxi would dare order the Estate Master of Yun Estate to come and go?”
When Yun Seol-hyeong frowned, Yun Gi-hyeong set down the brush in his hand and rubbed his dry face.
He could not think of what to say either.
Should he say he had felt certain that if he refused the strange man's proposal after the man suddenly appeared, Yun Estate would be turned into a sea of blood in an instant?
That the energy constricting his entire body had left him unable to move so much as a finger and thrown his thoughts into chaos?
That the man's aura and bearing were astonishing, yet he did not appear to belong to the Martial Alliance, so he had seemed like the master of some princely house whose name appeared in the imperial register while his face remained hidden, making Yun Gi-hyeong bow his head of its own accord?
How could he possibly admit that when the man asked whether Yun Gi-hyeong could bear the consequences if he revealed his identity, he had been unable to utter a single word in protest?!
After pondering, Yun Gi-hyeong lowered his hands and addressed his considerably younger brother.
“A menace.”
“...What?”
When Yun Seol-hyeong asked again, wondering if he had misheard, Yun Gi-hyeong repeated himself gravely.
“Worse than a madman is a menace.”
When the man told him to attend a trivial martial academy competition with nothing noteworthy about it except that Jo Gang-jin of the Tiger Shadow Fist, one of the Ten Heroes of Shanxi, had founded it, Yun Gi-hyeong had thought he had met a madman.
But when the man said he had moved in haste and carried nothing, so Yun Gi-hyeong should hand over everything he had and would receive ten times as much in return later, Yun Gi-hyeong finally realized.
An ordinary menace was already hard enough to handle. How could he possibly defeat a menace who was also a madman whose intentions he could not understand?
Moreover, the man had said something else he could not comprehend.
“He said there was someone who must be paid for saving my life?”
“Your life, Elder Brother?”
“Yes. He said not only mine, but all of ours. I do not know what he meant.”
“Please tell me more, Elder Brother.”
When Yun Seol-hyeong grew more serious, Yun Gi-hyeong moved to another seat.
The two brothers sat facing each other and put their heads together as they spoke.
As his elder brother's story continued, Yun Seol-hyeong's eyes widened, and eventually his expression hardened.
Yun Estate had survived between the Martial Alliance and Demon Alliance by relying on its geographic advantage near Beijing and its connection to the Imperial Family, but what kind of place was it?
His elder brother's temperament and martial arts were not to be taken lightly either, so Yun Seol-hyeong could not understand how such a man had been suppressed so completely, unable to muster the slightest resistance.
“Elder Brother, instead of that, why not let me go in your place?”
“You?”
“Yes. According to that man, do I not owe him the price of my life as well? I intend to repay it with my own hands.”
Yun Gi-hyeong meant to refuse because he did not know how the other man would react, but Yun Seol-hyeong was a little faster.
No matter what, it made no sense for the Estate Master himself to go.
How ridiculous would Yun Estate look if word of this spread?
“Have I not had too little activity outside because I have spent all this time concentrating on maintaining order within Yun Estate? It is time I began moving through the outside world and assessing its currents, so this will be a good opportunity.”
“But.......”
“Elder Brother, whatever happens, it will be better for people to say I became involved through my own decision than for you, the Estate Master of Yun Estate, to be implicated. I must go.”
Faced with his resolute younger brother's loyal counsel, Yun Gi-hyeong finally gave permission.
“Very well. Let us do that.”
When concern remained on his elder brother's face, Yun Seol-hyeong showed his confidence.
“Am I not fairly quick-witted and good at dealing with people? Do not worry too much.”
‘That only works when the other person can be reasoned with.’
Yun Gi-hyeong found his younger brother's confident boast even more worrying, but firmly suppressed his unease.
“Taiyuan.”
A storm had begun to descend upon Shanxi, which had quietly escaped even the Righteous-Demonic War.