“Let us have a meal again next time.”
“Yes, go safely, sir.”
“That sounds like my line. Go well, all of you.”
The chief clerk and the other clerks bowed their heads with a jerk toward me as I waved, then fled the inn at the speed of an ebbing tide.
And now, before me, a young man with his head down, his face flushed, at a complete loss.
“Junior clerk of the Golden Blossom Division, Ju Cho-saeng.”
“How does the Young Master know my name….”
“Let's go somewhere quiet for a moment.”
At that one word Ju Cho-saeng moved his feet and followed me.
***
I took him to a fine tea house and sat down in a private room where we could talk.
“Please speak at your ease.”
Once Seol Ha, who had come along, shut the door and went out to stand escort, I quietly studied the man I had brought.
To the outward eye, a common man with no particular distinguishing point whatsoever.
His face and build were so ordinary that if you passed him on the street you would struggle to recognize him again.
And yet the reason I had come to seek him out was that I knew what he would do in the Golden Manor in later days.
Before the regression, Ju Cho-saeng was given the role of hiding secret funds by a Geon A-seong facing the Golden Manor's collapse, and then vanished without a trace along with those funds.
In truth he was one of the main causes of Geon A-seong reaching qi deviation.
“I looked into you a little. You're not the sort of fellow to be working as a junior clerk with that innocent face.”
“What do you mean? As you said, I am merely a clerk who handles odd tasks.”
“Drop the games and show your true colors. Must I dig up the fact that you create false numbers in the ledgers at will and use them to do other business?”
“…….”
“Gather up the disposal entries for defective silk and scrap cloth arising at the cloth shops, and the annual loss comes to about half a pun against total output. That much is natural.”
Ju Cho-saeng swallowed dryly.
“But looking over the ledgers, the disposal entries come close to or exactly match an average of half a pun. Given the scale of the cloth trade it is a bird's-foot drop of blood, so no one would pay it any mind, but I found it oddly grating.”
I took a mouthful of tea and added.
“However many skilled weavers there may be, the losses arising falling out identical and precise year after year is a point that does not make sense. Explain it.”
“Since those of us who write the ledgers are only human after all….”
“Too precise to call it a mistake, those ledgers. And when I looked into it, the one with sole charge of the disposal ledgers is you. Now then, shall we start talking about where the funds created by that discrepancy go? Shall I? Or will you?”
When I stopped speaking, Ju Cho-saeng hurriedly rose from his seat and prostrated himself on the floor.
“Kill me and please bury this matter. If you tell me to be a slave, I will be a slave.”
“You look to have no strength either, so you seem of no use.”
“Please, I beg you. Only the foundling home, please do not touch it. Those children know nothing.”
Only on hearing that did I understand afresh what Ju Cho-saeng was living for.
“Is the foundling home where Clerk Ju was born and raised?”
“Yes, I beg your mercy….”
“So what the scraped-together funds flowed into became gruel going into the mouths of the foundling home's children, and clothes and quilts to cover their bodies? Money that should have been my blood and flesh?”
“I will take my own life here and now.”
“Will that settle it?”
Ju Cho-saeng's face, full of despair.
I rose from my seat, dropped to one knee before Ju Cho-saeng and lowered myself.
“From now on, work for me. Then I'll bury this.”
“Set me to any task at all!!”
“Keep running the funds flowing into the foundling home as you do now. And when the time comes, I'll give you greater authority than you have now. I'll raise your monthly wage substantially, so later on manage the ledgers of every business under the Golden Blossom Division yourself.”
“M… me, sir? But that role belongs to the Chief Steward….”
“Really, you are slow to catch on. Sharp with numbers and this sluggish about how people turn. I said ‘when the time comes.’”
“…….”
“Deciding that ‘time’ is a matter of when we have grounds enough to crush the Chief Steward. From now on, comb through every ledger and trace the Chief Steward's secret funds. Who would mind having their own work lightened for them? The other clerks included.”
“Then….”
“Yes, all this while the Golden Blossom Division has run like a ship without a captain. There must be a great deal of money leaking away for nothing. Enough that even a mere clerk like you could exploit the gaps in the ledgers.”
“…….”
“And do you think the Chief Steward couldn't do the same? A man who played hands and feet for the first son while reading the second son's face, no less.”
For an instant a strange light passed through Ju Cho-saeng's eyes.
He had caught me calling the second son, Geon A-seong, as though he were another man.
But Ju Cho-saeng did not dare open his mouth, only watched my face.
“I am Geon Gon, who is already known to be dead. In other words, the one you must serve is not that deranged madman Geon A-seong, but the Geon Gon who was called wretched.”
“H… how….”
“What, why would I tell a truth with my life riding on it to a man I've never met before?”
Ju Cho-saeng could say nothing and only raised his head, gaping up at me.
“I'm telling you that you're aboard the same boat. That I don't regard you, Ju Cho-saeng, as a card to be used and thrown away.”
“And if I… should betray you, what then?”
“I'd have to accept it humbly. And I'd have to throw away this ill-fitting coat I've worn for a while, too. Only…….”
I grinned.
“I have no intention of regretting my own methods.”
“…….”
“Think it over carefully and decide for yourself how to move. And when the ‘time’ comes and the Chief Steward's secret funds are found in the ledgers, report to me at once. After that, if things go well, we crush the Chief Steward and you become Chief Steward.”
“Ch… Chief Steward, you say?”
“Yes, and from then on all my funds are managed by you. Send money where I say, set aside money where I say to set it aside, spend it where it must be spent. And I pledge that when the time comes, the foundling home you support will be expanded and moved to a safer place.”
“…….”
“Once your mind is made up, move at once. Ah, and one moment.”
I sidled closer, curled my fist and came at Ju Cho-saeng.
“Nothing personal. You'll be suspected over why I called you aside, so we need at least some evidence that I threw a fit over the ledgers, don't we?”
In the split second a frightened Ju Cho-saeng sucked in a gasp.
My fist had already tapped lightly against Ju Cho-saeng's eye socket and withdrawn.
“Agh…!”
Ju Cho-saeng, who had been kneeling, went over flat on his back.
“Does it hurt?”
“Yes!!!”
Watching Ju Cho-saeng bellow, I was certain of it anew.
“Well now, the man has more temper than he looks.”
Ju Cho-saeng looked at me with an expression of disbelief.
“Steward Ju, I'm feeling plenty of the personal from you.”
To Ju Cho-saeng, whose eyes had gone round at the word Steward, I held out my hand.
“Get up. There's a lot to do. You've got a Steward's seat to take, and it's as good as picked already.”
Ju Cho-saeng gazed at my hand for a while, then took it and rose.
“Next time I will come up with a different reason myself. I do not care for this.”
Ju Cho-saeng rubbed his bruised eye with his palm as though rolling it, and sighed.
With this, one more foundation for devouring the Golden Manor had been laid.
***
After meeting Ju Cho-saeng I boarded the carriage, and inside the moving carriage Seol Ha and I talked quietly together.
Since becoming a peak-realm master I always used a sound wall for important conversations, so no one else could hear.
This miscellaneous skill, which blocks sound with true qi, was one only a peak-realm master could manage.
“She really said she would treat the marriage proposal as though it had never been?”
“Mm, when I accepted an unfavorable deal she agreed right away.”
I gave Seol Ha a brief account of the talk with Jaegal Rin, leaving out the part about the Soul-Seizing Art.
“…….”
“And so, out of nowhere, I've come into a warehouse full of White Spirit Wood.”
“You do not have funds on that scale anymore because of the earlier investment, do you? And you have not yet recovered the investment either.”
“True. On the verge of ruin, you might say.”
“Surely you do not mean to abandon your identity now and flee?”
Looking at Seol Ha as she gripped her scabbard tight, I let out a dry laugh.
“What, are you going to run right now?”
“If you go, Young Master, then anywhere.”
“There's still a fair bit worth gaining in the Golden Manor. Until then I'll have to live as Geon A-seong a while longer.”
“Then the funds spent buying the White Spirit Wood, how will you….”
I shrugged.
“I'll sell it again.”
“Will they, who have already secured an herb to replace White Spirit Wood in quantity, buy White Spirit Wood back at the price you want? I do not understand why you made such a deal.”
“Mm, they probably will.”
“What? How can you be so certain?”
“White Spirit Wood isn't something that can be replaced so easily.”
“Someone of the Jaegal Clan, said to be versed in every kind of knowledge, would not have been taken in without knowing that… how can you be so certain, Young Master?”
“Sometimes people with too much certainty in themselves cannot bear the word failure, and their eye of wisdom darkens. Even when it is a matter where, if they endured a moment and looked back, a solution would turn up unexpectedly.”
This was my own experience as well.
For me, who had lived ninety years, the years had not merely flowed past.
Countless failures, challenges and adversities had made me solid, and every kind of regret had developed and goaded me further.
So today as well, taking the affairs of those days as stones from another hill, I could become a slightly better self.
Always humble, patient and careful.
“Truly, Young Master, I think you have become someone other than the Young Master I knew. Now and then I feel as though I am facing a seasoned elder who has been through fire and water.”
“You're the older one, Noona. Sadly, the old one here is you. Ohaha.”
“Yes, I am aware of that.”
Seol Ha's expression went frigid; she glared at me and then whipped her head away.
But the mood turned decidedly cold.
Did I do something wrong?
I said nothing and only scratched the bridge of my nose.
I had simply said what was true.
It looked as though we would reach Lanzhou without much conversation.
***
“Hohohoho!!”
Riding in her carriage, Jaegal Rin burst into laughter loud enough to lift the carriage away.
How delicious it was.
The feeling of gripping someone and moving them as one pleased was always a thrill.
The Golden Manor's second son, Geon A-seong, had in the end been a man of nothing but overflowing strength and plentiful gaps.
-In the end your dream is to be Chairman of the Golden Manor, isn't it? Then I will put a real marriage proposal to your brother or to your younger brother and trample you underfoot. This situation is rather humiliating for me, you see.
-Forgive me. I did not mean it that way….
-Fine. I did not behave entirely well either, so let us do a deal to patch the relationship up in due measure.
-A deal?
-It concerns the rights to acquire the White Spirit Wood.
“Tee hee.”
And then the sight of Geon A-seong, who had been trembling at her threat, lunging in with eyes stuffed full of greed.
Then again, he would want to win the succession fight for the Golden Manor's Chairman.
-White Spirit Wood is in such demand in Lanzhou there is none to sell. Since this year's entire output has been monopolized, you will likely get ten times what you buy from me.
-But then why does Miss Jaegal not sell it herself, knowing that?
-Because my father so strongly opposes his precious only daughter doing drudge work like trade. Why else would I sell at such a preposterous price? Frankly, part of my reason for speaking of it is that I hope we may become better acquainted.
-Very well. But I have made a large investment and have no money left on hand.
Still, the rights to acquire the White Spirit Wood that you propose seem quite interesting, so if I fail later to pay the sum I have offered, I will repay double the loss. After I have confirmed the stock with my own eyes, of course.
-Pay five times. Only then can I be at ease.
-So be it.
Recalling the Geon A-seong of her memory, she could not hold back her laughter.
Once the contract was set to be made, however wrong things turned out later, how could he dare to come and take issue with it.
Jaegal Rin opened the carriage door and released the carrier pigeon she had prepared.
Pavilion Master Wang, her business partner, whom she had cleared away.
He was said to be watching only for a chance to rise again.
Give him a hint and he would fly to the Dragon Iron League's League Leader and share the information.
FLUTTER—
What would happen if the Dragon Iron League of Lanzhou were told that the owner of the White Spirit Wood had changed from herself, the daughter of the Jaegal Clan's Clan Head, to the second son of the Golden Manor, comparatively weak in martial force and influence within murim?
The Dragon Iron League would be itching to raid the warehouse without leaving a trace.
And even if they did not, it was fine.
Even without them, she had secured three tenths of the sum she had lost.
“A windfall.”
A humming came out of her of its own accord.
However outstanding a prodigy Geon A-seong might be, past anyone's expectation, blocking the Dragon Iron League's movements alone would be close to impossible.
It had been a marriage in name only.
But to Geon A-seong, who had refused and humiliated her, this much was repaying him properly.