Die Inside, or Live Beyond
Mui met Seol Woo-chan's eyes the instant they flew open, and spoke with flat finality.
"Will you die inside Cheongguk? Or will you live beyond it?"
His face stayed blank as he regarded the two loyal retainers frozen in shock, but his gaze was knife-sharp.
"I'll hear your decision tomorrow night."
Mui left the room without a sound. The three who had been keeping watch before the door and beneath each window fell in behind him at once and vanished. No one saw them go.
Sleep refused to come. The fury would not settle; whether she lay down, sat up, or stood, her chest felt ready to burst. Oh Myeong-hui lay back and closed her eyes.
"Seol Woo-chan! I will see you dead, no matter what it takes!"
Because that old fool clung to his stubbornness and blocked the coronation, nothing was going as she had planned. If they had simply dressed up a ceremony to So-wang's liking, without those wretched Dragon's Sacred Relics, everything would already have been settled.
"Your Ladyship the So-ui. It is Court Lady Ma."
Late in the night, Oh Myeong-hui, who had lain awake waiting for the news she expected, pushed herself upright.
"Enter."
The door opened at once. Court Lady Ma came in and lit the lamp.
"How did it go?"
At the whispered question, Court Lady Ma drew close and answered in a whisper of her own.
"Cheon Sang-seon says he went, met them, and came back. But the fee they named was nothing like what we had expected, so he returned."
"What kind of talk is that!"
Her temper snapped. They were nothing but hired killers. She meant to have every one of them dead once the work was finished anyway — pay them whatever they asked, and hunt them down afterward!
"Your Ladyship, look at this."
Court Lady Ma drew from her sleeve the letter Cheon Sang-seon had given her and held it out. Oh Myeong-hui read it quickly, then smiled a thin, cold smile and set the paper alight. It burned away in a moment, leaving not even ash.
"Hand over a thousand gold coins at once! Tell them to kill both Seol Woo-chan and Seol Ga-heon! I want to hear their screams with my own ears, and it galls me that I cannot!"
Court Lady Ma asked at once, as if she had expected nothing else.
"Your Ladyship, shall I have them bring the heads? Or portraits?"
Murderous light seethed in Oh Myeong-hui's eyes.
Seol A-hwa lay in the dark room, her face white in a way no sun-browned woman of Cheongguk ever was. It was not the horrific face of rumor, a mask of blisters, nor an ugly one so swollen with running pus that the eyes could barely open. Each time she slipped out at night she mixed mud and medicinal herbs into a paste and smeared it over that small face; wash it away, and clear skin without a single scar showed through, along with features fine and distinct.
Unlike other nights, Ah-hwa could not sleep, though she lay still. It was not that she had come back earlier than usual. Eyes shut or open, that man kept returning to her — the one who had caught her, as if gathering her into his arms, when she was about to fall. The feel of the hard chest against her cheek, and of the two strong hands braced at her back and waist, rose again and again and left her flustered. A low, resonant voice circled her ear. Ah-hwa rolled over hard and lay facing the wall.
"Why am I like this! Sleep! I have to sleep! Ah-hwa, sleep!"
She squeezed her eyes shut and chanted it like a spell.
Hey. You all right?
His voice rang in her ear again. Her heart began to pound as if it had broken into a run, and in a fluster she yanked the quilt up over her head and cried out.
"I am not all right! I'm not all right!"
Face burning red, Ah-hwa muttered that it was only the heat.
In the deep hour before dawn, a well stood in the rear yard of the inn. Guests who paid to bathe could draw the water themselves; near the well, wooden planks had been lashed together like a folding screen and set in a ring. The weather stayed mild all year, so there was no need for hot water, and the arrangement worked. The landlady, insisting they were her benefactors, had taken no coin, shown them how it was done, and gone — adding that they should use it as they pleased while they stayed.
The six of them, delighted, washed for the first time in a long while, and Mui was bathing alone, last of all. Five men, already changed into clean clothes, sat crowded into his room. It was a space where five men could lie down only if they packed in tight, and with five powerfully built bodies in it, none of them could stretch out at ease. Some leaned on the wall. Some lay half on the floor, heads propped on their arms. They reached into a large, worn, rough bowl set atop a fine box in the middle of the room, took the scorched rice inside, and chewed. Geum-a had left it for them.
Mui had said that whatever choice Seol Woo-chan made tomorrow night, he would be gone before that night was over. The Crazy Bastards had been driven without pause ever since they set out at the Squad Leader's request, and the word that they were going home left them giddy; jokes spilled out of their own accord. Even while they traded one jibe and another, Yi-ho, O-ho, and Yuk-ho never said that Mui had been Crown Prince of Cheongguk. The look in his eyes — that he would tear their mouths open the moment they spoke — had been sincere. The greater reason, though, was that Mui did not seem like a crown prince in the slightest.
Sa-ho, washed clean in well water cold as midwinter ice and changed into neat clothes, came into the room. Five gazes flew to him at once and stuck there, as if they had been waiting.
"Hey, what did that mean? What kind of woman was the one the Captain said he likes? A woman with tits out to here, right?"
Seeing no reason to answer something so out of nowhere, Sa-ho ignored him, pushed in among them, took a seat, and spoke.
"What the hell is a tit, you lunatic. You want the Captain to kill you? Talk like you've got some class."
The five of them turned the word class over a few times and rummaged through their heads for classy words.
"I can talk classy too! Our Captain's a Tit-Titan!"
Yuk-ho frowned and asked Il-ho,
"What's a Tit-Titan?"
"Ignorant bastard. A woman with tits out to here!"
They all burst out laughing. Yuk-ho jumped in at once.
"Our Captain's an Ass-Madman!"
"What's an Ass-Madman?"
"Ass-Madman! He likes a woman whose ass is madly huge!"
Yi-ho swept a look over them as if they were hopeless, and said it flat.
"You idiots, our Captain's a Face-Man! Pretty face, and he likes her even if she's old!"
O-ho, seated beside him, shook his head.
"I'll stake both my balls! Our Captain's a Skirt-Spring! Put a skirt on her and he springs right up!"
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. No, you morons. Everybody put up one gold coin. Say what you like — our Captain goes for innocent charm. You think we've watched him for a year or two?"
"Ooh!"
They all let out a cry of admiration at the properly classy phrase Sam-ho had produced. Sa-ho snorted. There was no way Sam-ho actually knew a classy word.
"Strip the wrapping off and they're all the same. Why bother choosing. It's a headache. Long as she isn't crazy."
"Puhaha. The same, my ass, you idiot!"
Scorched rice came flying from every side. Sam-ho gaped his mouth and whipped his head this way and that, determined to catch it. Sa-ho did not so much as look at them. He leaned against the wall and chewed. But before he could properly swallow what was in his mouth, Il-ho kept badgering him to explain.
"Explain what?"
"Sigorjabjong! What the Captain told the head girl at that courtesan house — what kind of woman he wants!"
Sa-ho chewed, swallowed the scorched rice, and answered.
"The only one the Captain ever thought was pretty, besides our Squad Leader."
Five pairs of blank eyes turned on one another. Then the Crazy Bastards exploded all at once and roared with laughter.
"Shit. It was a country mutt?"
"The Captain's taste in women was a goddamn dog! Hahaha!"
"Hiyah, that's our Captain. His taste really is dogshit! Hahaha!"
"Wow, that's low. So he likes a gentle little female raised out in the country, same as that mutt. A complete thief's bastard! The Captain's slept his way from virgins to courtesans to widows, and if she's gentle and a young virgin on top of it, that right there makes him the real son of a bitch!"
Sa-ho shook his head. Mui would be walking in any moment. Keep this up and they were going to catch a beating.
"Not a single bastard got it right! Puhaha!"
"What do you mean nobody got it? I got it! Tit-Titan! A woman with tits out to here — I'm right! The dog the Captain liked whelped so many pups her teats blew up! Everybody hand over a gold coin!"
Yuk-ho, who had laughed his fill, reached for the scorched rice, then looked at the box beneath the bowl and asked again, unable to believe it.
"But they're not coming back to demand this returned, are they? All he did was flap his mouth, and they're hauling in a thousand gold coins. I just can't believe it."
"Hey, that bastard's tongue was born for it. The way it rolls so smooth while he runs a con — even I was nodding along, it sounded so real!"
Il-ho flung the piece of scorched rice in his hand at Sa-ho and snickered.
"I don't get it. How does everybody fall for that bastard? It's obvious."
Yi-ho laughed as he answered Sam-ho, who was shaking his head.
"What are you trying to understand. Just figure he was born that way. Haven't we seen it more than once or twice. When that bastard decides to work that face, smiling with his eyes and talking all low and smoky, even the men dropped their pants."
The six of them laughed, remembering something from a few years back.
"Hey, but what was that 'mad-class' you talked about?"
Il-ho asked, but Sa-ho only stared, and gave no answer. Thinking maybe he had forgotten, Il-ho asked again.
"You said it to that bastard in the straw hat. 'We are the highest of the mad-class. Don't compare us to those run-of-the-mill, low-class killer bastards.' So what's 'mad-class'?"
Sa-ho snorted, rolled his stiff neck, and answered as if it hardly mattered.
"Oh. That. 'Crazy Bastard class.'"
"Puhaha!"
The five of them burst out laughing and nodded. Right. Among the five hundred men of the squad at Namhanseong in the Han Empire, they were the highest of the Crazy Bastards.
The door banged open.
"The hell are you doing. Not a one of you in bed."