A Thousand Coins for Two Heads
Mui stepped into the room with a towel still piled on his wet hair. The men who had been lying on their sides shot upright at once.
"Boss, we were waiting to show you this."
Buzzing with excitement, Il-ho set down the bowl of scorched rice and shoved a box toward Mui—lacquer polished to a glossy, expensive sheen.
"What is it?"
Mui didn't so much as touch it. One look at those sparkling, gleeful faces and he knew damn well there was nothing decent inside.
He had too much on his mind to deal with the Crazy Bastards just now. A jerk of his chin pointed at the door.
"Out. And quit pulling this useless shit."
Sam-ho, seated at his side, flung the lid open and crowed.
"Ta-da!"
The box was packed full of gold coins.
Towel still perched on his head, Mui stared at the glittering coins, then slowly raised his eyes. Five pairs of bright, impish eyes watched him the way brats watch a new toy. He wanted to stab every last one of them.
"You been stealing?"
Before the grim words had even finished, five of the Crazy Bastards—everyone but Sa-ho—huddled in close. Sa-ho, as if none of it concerned him, leaned back against the wall, stretched out his legs, and dragged the bowl of scorched rice toward himself.
"Boss, that eunuch bastard brought a thousand gold coins and laid them at that guy's feet!"
Mui's stunned gaze swung to Sa-ho, the one all five fingers were pointing at.
"So now you're out seducing eunuchs too?"
Sa-ho paid the incredulous stare no mind and went on chewing scorched rice.
"Boss, we came here to get a room, and there was this punk trying to kill the innkeeper. Somehow—unavoidably, truly with no other choice—we ended up killing him."
Mui whipped his head around and glared at Il-ho, who was spinning out the whole mess. He had told them, plain as day, not to stir up trouble.
"What? Somehow, unavoidably, no other choice? You bastards really want to die!"
"Ah, come on! Boss, don't cut in—just listen! I'm dying to hear the rest!"
O-ho, who had missed the story while he was off washing up, scolded Mui for interrupting. Absurd as it was, Mui was curious too, so he shut his mouth.
"There was a torn half of a note in that punk's money pouch, with some strange mark on it. Somehow I ended up holding onto it…"
Il-ho was still talking, bright with excitement, but Mui's face had already gone as savage as a yaksha's. The moment Il-ho finished, though, the Crazy Bastards burst into admiration and clapped for Sa-ho.
"Even telling it again, I'm impressed. A toast to that lunatic tongue of yours!"
Il-ho flicked a piece of scorched rice and hit Sa-ho square on the lips.
"Damn. I respect you, you con-artist bastard!"
"Hey, let's open a shop together! Contract killing—perfect! I love it, contract killing! Five hundred gold a bastard's head! Kyaa!"
"What gets me even more is that he took a follow-up order. That eunuch brought a thousand gold coins in a flash!"
"Whoa. I actually got chills. That bastard's head is true Rank 1! Insane!"
Thud. The lid of the coin box slammed shut with a murderous sound. The Crazy Bastards shut their mouths and turned to look at Mui.
Eyes closed, he drew a long breath. Because of that walking disaster Park Yu-shin, he could not simply kill these lunatics. In the space of a blink, a thousand silent recitations of endure poured through his closed eyes like a torrential rain.
"So you took gold to kill Seol Woo-chan and Seol Ga-heon."
Even under the dark weight of Mui's voice, Sa-ho did not flinch. He rose from the wall and sat down squarely in front of him.
"Boss, we need to get them out of here as quickly as we can. The royal house of Cheongguk looks set on killing those two."
Mui opened his eyes. A gaze sharp enough to cut drove straight into Sa-ho.
"That eunuch was a palace eunuch. My guess is a fairly high rank."
"And why do you think that?"
"No matter how they try to hide it, you can tell a eunuch at a glance. He was older, and used to ordering people about and talking down to them. Even so, he said he would go fetch the gold from someone else—he had no authority to decide on his own—and he brought this much back in less than two hours. A place you can reach from this inn and return from within two hours. Time for them to confer. Someone who can move a high-ranking eunuch at will. Even a simple reckoning says the one who gave the order is inside the palace, doesn't it?"
"And knowing all that, you still took a filthy job like this?"
Mui spoke as if he might grind his teeth to powder, but Sa-ho only blinked, innocent as a child.
"We did wonderfully, didn't we! We snatched that contract right up because we were thinking of you, Boss! Ah, we really are precious!"
"You wanna die!"
The playful light in Sa-ho's eyes changed.
"Boss, we're living off the money and valuables we took from those bandits, but that will be gone fast. We don't even know yet how many people we're taking out with us. Two of them are patients who can barely move. If it comes to it, we may have to spend gold like water on bribes."
Mui's face turned grave. He thought of Seol Woo-chan with his eyes closed, that look of utter desolation. A loyal subject of Cheongguk, a man who cared for the people as if they were his own family—would he truly agree to leave?
If the rest of the family said they were leaving Cheongguk and Seol Woo-chan refused, Mui already meant to knock him senseless and drag him out if he had to. He could not simply leave the man to die. And if, as Sa-ho said, a eunuch had bought contract killers to murder the two of them, then the hand behind it was surely inside the palace. They had to get Seol Woo-chan and his household out of Cheongguk as soon as possible.
"When did you promise them?"
"Seven days. In seven days, we hand over two heads. Here."
A plan unfurled fast through Mui's mind. The Crazy Bastards had made a mess, but the mercy in it was the seven days they had bought. Whoever had commissioned the job, others might not wait—but that one, at least, would sit quiet for seven days.
"Aigoo. What's our boss getting like this for? It's not as if he's only ever run a con once or twice!"
Sam-ho, misreading the silent, thinking Mui, assumed he was torn over pulling a fraud this large, and said it with a laugh.
"You wanna die!"
"Boss, honestly—when you scammed people in the capital of the Han Empire by selling the Squad Leader's portraits, you nearly killed yourself rounding those paintings back up. This doesn't even need that!"
Mui's breath roughened. That bastard Sa-ho was deliberately dragging up the time he had drawn Yu-shin's portrait and sold it.
"All they wanted was two heads anyway. Cut a couple off corpses of about the right age lying dead in the street, tidy them up a bit, and you're done. How are they supposed to know who anyone is from a pair of mangled heads?"
"A bit? Tidy up heads? You little—!"
The air around Mui turned lethal, as if his foot might fly at Sa-ho any second. No one paid him the slightest mind.
Clap, clap, clap. The five Crazy Bastards applauded in genuine awe.
"Kyaa! A round of applause for that insane head!"
"Me too, me too!"
"I'm really opening a shop with that bastard! The contract-killing shop's name: Heads, Trimmed and Sold!"
"Just give me ten gold coins. I'll trim the heads for you!"
"This is insane! How does someone even come up with a thought that creative!"
Mui yanked the towel still covering his wet hair down off his head and wound it thick around his right hand. So long as he didn't actually kill these lunatics, it would be fine. Wouldn't it?
"You crazy bastards—today I'm ripping every one of your mouths open!"
They scrambled out of the room in a rush. Even Sa-ho, who was supposed to share the room in order to guard him, fled.
The early morning air was clear. The two lords had risen at dawn and emptied every drop of the porridge Kang Su-hwan had made from minced boiled beef. Relieved, he carried the medicinal decoction into the room.
"Lord Seol, please take your medicine."
He brought two bowls in on a low dining table. Seol Woo-chan beckoned him closer and told him to sit near. Not knowing why, Kang Su-hwan set the table before them and sat.
"Look around outside, and come back."
At the whisper, Kang Su-hwan's eyes sharpened. Catching that there was something important to be said, he deliberately raised his voice.
"Ah, look at the state of me. I'll bring water at once."
He stepped out and casually scanned the surroundings, feeling for any presence. Fortunately it was early, and everyone was busy starting the day. His house stood apart, farthest in, and there was no one nearby. He dipped a bowl of water in the kitchen and returned to the room.
"Please speak."
Seol Woo-chan steadied his breath. If he had met that person alone, and not together with his son, he would surely have thought it a dream.
"His Royal Highness the Crown Prince is alive."
At first it sounded like nonsense. The Crown Prince had been dead for twenty years. Had So-wang beaten Seol Woo-chan so badly that something had gone wrong in his head? Only when he saw the expression on Seol Ga-heon's face, there within his line of sight, did his mouth fall open in shock. He felt he ought to say something. Nothing came out.
"He said he would come again tonight."
"Are you certain? No—how did you confirm it? Did he have anything at all that could prove he was the Crown Prince? Isn't it suspicious for someone to appear claiming to be the Crown Prince in a situation like this?"
Kang Su-hwan's mind and chest were a tangle; he could barely think. How could he possibly be alive? Had he not himself confirmed the Crown Prince's body, burned in the fire? Under that shock, and a guilt he could not bear, he had wandered, then returned to Cheongguk and hidden himself away in Baekjeong Village.
Kang Su-hwan had been the late King's royal bodyguard. Just before the late King died, he had told Kang Su-hwan that he did not wish the Crown Prince to die at their hands, and asked him to protect the prince. So Kang Su-hwan had taken the Crown Prince at once and left Cheongguk, entering a temple in Seohanseong of the Han Empire.