A Hand Extended in Reconciliation
That night.
Dinner hour.
Mansang, the greatest merchant guild of Joseon, operated like a logistics hub that never slept—goods flowing day and night—so Hayun and roughly ten other haengsu lived and took their meals right here in the guild's quarters. The haengsu who had families of their own went home once the sun set.
That left the evening crowd made up, naturally, of only the young haengsu around Hayun's age.
"Ugh, I'm starving."
Hayun clutched her growling stomach as she stepped into the dining hall.
"This won't do. I need to put something in me, and fast."
She'd been on her feet all day and hadn't managed a single meal. The morning had been consumed by the performance announcements, the afternoon by delivering the wooden chests to Min Seungji's residence, and by the time she'd returned and finished wading through the mountains of paperwork, the sun had long since gone down.
Her personality simply wouldn't let her rest until she'd inspected the goods herself, right down to the last piece—which was why she'd insisted on accompanying the laborers all the way to the Min residence. Only after confirming that every chest arrived safely had the day's schedule finally come to an end.
Grrrowl.
"……At this rate I really will collapse."
At the noisy signal rumbling from her belly, Hayun hurriedly began scooping food onto her tray.
"Thank you for the meal."
Tray in hand, she settled naturally into a seat in the corner of the dining hall. The haengsu who'd arrived earlier were already clustered in little groups over their dinners, but the truth was she still didn't feel comfortable intruding on any of them. After this morning's events, they exchanged at least a nod of greeting now—but that was the extent of it. Not enough time had passed to get truly close.
Then it happened.
One of the men rose from his seat and came straight over to her.
"There you are again. You've got real talent, I'll say that."
"Sorry, who……?"
When Hayun looked up in puzzlement, the man introduced himself first.
"Ah, right. Name's Han Seongdeok. I'm a junior haengsu, same as you."
Han Seongdeok was a male haengsu around Hayun's age. Broad-shouldered and thick through the chest, with a squarish face—if he hadn't said otherwise, she might have mistaken him for a porter rather than a trade manager.
"I'm sorry for misjudging you all this time. I figured you were all talk and no substance."
He scratched his head sheepishly. The gesture was oddly endearing on a man built like a bear.
"But you weren't bluffing at all. No question—you're the kind of talent the Daebang would go out of his way to bring in himself."
He searched for a moment for the right words, then thrust his hand out in front of her.
"Consider this my formal apology."
"……?"
A rough, calloused hand.
Hayun stared at it blankly. It wasn't that she had some hidden motive—
Is this…… how men apologize to each other?
She'd never encountered anything like it, and she honestly couldn't decide whether she was supposed to take the hand or just stand there.
When her deliberation dragged on too long, Han Seongdeok grew anxious and pressed her.
"You…… not gonna accept it?"
Only then catching on, Hayun answered flatly.
"Dunno. That depends on how you act from here on out."
"Haha! Petty little thing, aren't you, for a man?"
Han Seongdeok boomed with laughter and clapped her on the back.
WHACK!
The bear-paw of a palm landed, and an unexpected shockwave shot through her.
"Hrk—!"
Hayun barely kept the food she'd just swallowed from coming back up her throat.
"None of this moping around inside. Come on out—the apology calls for it. Tonight's my treat, and I'm not sparing any expense."
"You want to go out?"
"That's right. A day like today? No way we settle for this slop. Am I wrong?"
As it happened, Hayun was craving something special. She'd only been picking listlessly at her side dishes anyway.
In her modern life, she would have raised a celebratory glass for a day like this.
Hayun seemed like the upright, by-the-book type, but she had her own principles. Chief among them: on any day she landed a project of this scale, she celebrated—alone if she had to.
Soju, wine, whiskey—it didn't matter. She never cared what the drink was, how wrecked she got, or what shape she'd be in the next day. Only by deliberately unwinding like that could she shake free of the crushing weight she carried.
And now the perfect invitation had landed right at that moment—she had no reason whatsoever to refuse.
Hayun smiled slyly.
"Can you afford it? My palate's anything but cheap."
"Haha! What do you take me for!"
The answer pleased him enormously, and Han Seongdeok burst into hearty laughter.
"I'll treat you to the finest dinner in all of Uiju."
Then he turned and bellowed at the group he'd been eating with until just now.
"Hey, fellas! We're finishing tonight's dinner at Cheongunru. What do you say?"
"Ohh! Cheongunru! Now that's more like it!"
"Let's get moving, right now!"
At the mention of Cheongunru, everyone shot up from their seats as if they'd been waiting for the word. Hayun's approval didn't seem to figure into the equation at all—the lot of them, fired up, came streaming out of the dining hall in a rush.
As if they'd been planning to go there from the very beginning.
"Heh."
Despite herself, Hayun let out a small laugh at the sight.
These men who'd once seemed so distant and forbidding now felt, before she knew it, like friends her own age. Say what you would—they were still young, in the thick of the years when you're at your hungriest for fun.
Perhaps embarrassed by how suddenly empty the dining hall had grown, Han Seongdeok shrugged his shoulders.
"See that? I'll be waiting outside, so hurry up."
"Got it."
With dinner at Cheongunru settled, Hayun headed toward the kitchen to return her tray.
"……"
Then, suddenly, her gaze snagged on a single spot.
At the very center of the deserted hall, one person still sat eating alone.
Song Dohyeon……
He'd been alone ever since she first walked into the hall. No—not just tonight. He'd been eating alone this whole time.
She could excuse it in her own case, but that Song Dohyeon, with more than a decade of work at this very guild, should be a loner—she simply couldn't make sense of it.
"……"
Amid all the noise and clamor around him, he kept to his seat in perfect stillness. Beside him, where no one sat, lay a ledger. His eyes never left it for an instant—as if his very fate hung on those pages.
"……"
Hayun saw her old self in him.
The way she'd once been frozen out by her teammates, eating every meal in lonely silence. The memory stirred something awake inside her.
And so, without quite meaning to, she found herself walking toward Song Dohyeon.
"Come to mock me, have you?"
He muttered without so much as lifting his head.
"Then go ahead—laugh all you like. Days you can laugh like that won't come around again after today."
He never spared her even a glance. His eyes stayed fixed on the ledger alone. Hayun studied him for a moment in silence.
"……"
Still—today had taught her one thing.
No matter how bitter the rivalry, if someone simply extended a hand of reconciliation first, matters could resolve far more easily than anyone expected.
Hayun held out her hand, exactly as she'd been shown only minutes ago.
"Come with us."
"What?"
Song Dohyeon looked up, visibly startled. Hayun's hand, as slender and pale as polished jade, was stretched out right in front of him.
"……What exactly are you trying to do?"
"Make peace."
"This isn't you picking a fight?"
Hayun recycled the line she'd learned just moments before.
"Petty little thing, aren't you, for a man? How does this look like picking a fight?"
"What did you just say?"
"Ah—is that not it?"
Flustered by the unexpectedly ferocious reaction, Hayun withdrew her hand.
The world of men is complicated.
She'd done exactly what Han Seongdeok had done not ten minutes ago. Why the atmosphere had turned this hostile, she couldn't fathom.
Slapping him on the back is probably out of the question here, huh?
Hayun gazed at him quietly. Giving up after a single try was too heartless, too sad.
She tried again.
"Sitting around like this is pointless. Come out with us. What is this, sulking alone over your little book?"
"Why would I keep company with the likes of you?"
Song Dohyeon closed the ledger and looked up at her. The eyes that met hers were glacially cold.
"The likes of— isn't that going a bit far?"
"I don't need your cheap pity. If you came here to comfort me, save it and get out."
"It's not pity. This is what you call goodwill—goodwill!"
"……!"
At the word goodwill, something flickered at the corners of Song Dohyeon's eyes. But only for a moment. A sneer quickly took its place.
"Goodwill, is it…… Hah. What a perfectly useless emotion."
That bitter, bone-deep coldness finally turned Hayun's heart as well.
"Fine, then stay here and rot! You think anyone's doing this because they want to? I go out of my way to care, and you just slam the door in my face, the whole way down."
"I never asked you to. If you're finished talking, then leave. I still have a great deal of work left to do."
Song Dohyeon waved his chopsticks in irritation, and Hayun, temper flaring hot, at last turned her back on him.
"Fine! You're so much better than everyone else! Eat alone like that for the rest of your life!"
She was just about to storm outside when—
"What are you doing? Aren't you coming out?"
Han Seongdeok, already waiting outdoors, poked his head back through the doorway.
"Oho."
Taking in the sight of Hayun and Song Dohyeon still at each other's throats, a smile spread across Han Seongdeok's face. The truth was, the two of them were near contemporaries. Song Dohyeon's prickly personality kept them from being close, but they weren't exactly enemies either.
"You two troublemakers—still holding a grudge, are you?"
Han Seongdeok strode up close to them both.
And then, with a wicked grin, he threw his arms around the two of them and hauled.
"Both of you, follow me! Tonight, yours truly is going to settle this feud for good!"
"Wha—what?!"
Against Han Seongdeok's monstrous strength, Hayun and Song Dohyeon were practically dragged out the door, pulled along as if by a runaway cart.