A Different Kind Of Hellion

Why did the Dang Sect ask me to take on Dang Ji-in’s schooling?

Because from everything he had seen so far, the man was a hot-blooded warrior and nothing more, hardly a hellion at all.

“You were just thinking that, were you not? This bastard seems perfectly all right apart from the showing off, so why do they call him a hellion? Something like that?”

Cheon Tae-san had been caught out, but he shook his head.

“No.”

“It is quite all right. People have looked at me that way for a long time and I am used to it. Do you know what my byname is in the provincial capital of Sichuan?”

“You have a byname?”

Nothing in the material Cheon Tae-san had read gave Dang Ji-in a byname.

“The Dang Sect Lust Wolf.”

The name meant the wolf of the Dang Sect with an appetite for women, and it came near to being a disgrace as the byname of a son of a great house.

“Do you know how many bastard children I have? Five, was it? Or six?”

At that, Yeo-seol muttered.

“At that rate isn’t he a mutt in heat rather than a hellion?”

Dang Ji-in took no offense even at that and answered as though it were nothing out of the ordinary.

“I hear that one often enough too.”

“Whoaa! A different kind of hellion.”

That hellions came in so many varieties astonished Yeo-seol, and it dawned on her how narrow her own experience of the world really was. Most of the hellions she had met flew into a rage the moment the truth was spoken to them, or reached straight for violence. Namgung Mu-baek, Mak Ji-mong and Mak Jin-yul, all the ones she had seen so far, were of that sort. A hellion came with that much violence and rudeness and ill will as a matter of course.

“As far as I know, having an appetite for women doesn’t get you called a hellion. Put nicely you’re a flower-plucking young master; put badly you’re a lecher. Well, if you ask which is worse, a hellion or a lecher, they’re the same. The way hard shit and runny shit are the same shit under two different names.”

“My heart aches at the inch of steel from a young beauty¹ brimming with vitality like a wildflower. Young beauty, I like you. Far better than the fellows who read my face and butter me up and curse me behind my back. You are the first person ever to curse me to my face. Be my friend.”

Yeo-seol stared at Dang Ji-in for a while before she spoke.

“Me, I don’t associate with hellions as a rule. But people who know their own faults and have the will to mend them, those I think highly of. Even so, a hellion isn’t qualified to be my friend. My servant, now — that might be another matter.”

Both hands clutched to his chest, playing the wounded man, Dang Ji-in went down on one knee before Yeo-seol.

“O young goddess, take up this pitiful soul as your servant.”

Yeo-seol played along.

“O soul that has lost its way. Become this goddess’s servant. Cleanse your soul thereby, and break free of the lecher-hellion.”

Dang Ji-in answered with fervor.

“I shall follow the goddess’s will. I shall be the goddess’s faithful servant.”

Watching the two of them clown through their game, Cheon Tae-san felt a smile force its way onto his lips. Dang Ji-in had dropped his mental age to keep time with Yeo-seol.

“Truly the world holds madmen of every variety. This goddess would grant her servant rest.”

“Thank you. O goddess.”

The two of them showed no sign of bringing the game to an end. Dang Ga-ryeong had been listening from outside, and she climbed into the carriage looking ashamed and made her excuses.

“I am sorry. The youngest was never a child like this — then one day he changed strangely, as though he had taken the wrong medicine.”

“Sister, I only carry a joke too far; there is nothing strange about me. To this day I do not understand why they call me a hellion.”

“Ji-in. How bad must it be for Father to have sent for Master Scholar Cheon?”

“I beg your pardon? Sent for the Scholar Divine Sword? For what?”

“For what, indeed! He sent for him as your teacher.”

“Ah — the Scholar Divine Sword is famed as the Specialist Hellion-Reforming Scholar, so he was brought here for my sake.”

Yeo-seol asked.

“Where did you hear the words Scholar Divine Sword? That’s something they say in Jiangxi and nowhere else.”

Dang Ji-in’s mental age sat close to Yeo-seol’s own, and she had come to treat him as a friend. He fell in with it nicely.

“This servant used to come and go from the courtesan houses and the wine houses as though they were his own home. The comic patter the storytellers there did was mostly about the Scholar Divine Sword.”

“Oho, is that so?”

When Yeo-seol showed interest, Dang Ji-in spoke as though to win her favor.

“And now that he has killed the Demonic Cult’s Fourteenth Pavilion Master, Oh Ju-hyang the White-Haired Girl Demon, the murim is about to be swept by a storm of talk over the Scholar Divine Sword.”

“Is it really as much as that?”

“Come now, the goddess would not know. In a hundred years of the murim no rising talent has brought off anything of the sort. So of course he will have people’s eyes on him. …But, Sister, I am going to catch it when I get home, aren’t I?”

Dang Ga-ryeong forgot that Cheon Tae-san and Yeo-seol were sitting right there, and flew into a rage.

“Do you call that a question! How did you get the Formless Poison out?”

“How, indeed? I took it out of the poison vault.”

“How did you get in there? You need the clan head’s permission to get in.”

“That? I forged the clan head’s seal.”

“Good heavens!”

Dang Ga-ryeong smacked Dang Ji-in across the back.

“You wretch, you could be thrown out of the house for that.”

“Let them.”

Dang Ji-in was not afraid of any such thing.

“Hoo. What am I to do with you?”

Dang Ga-ryeong sighed like someone who had given up.

“Sister. They say you are to be betrothed to Young Master Seop next month — is it true?”

He had turned the subject on her without warning, and at the mention of the betrothal Dang Ga-ryeong’s eyes went wide.

“Why would you speak of such a thing in front of an outsider? Has the boy lost his mind?”

“What of it? This one here is a goddess, and this gentleman is my teacher.”

At any rate, quite unlike a man of the Dang Sect, Dang Ji-in ran on like water down a green mountain.

With a temper like that, living in the Dang Sect must be hard going.

The Dang Sect handled poison and hidden weapons, and its family tradition laid heavy stress on being quiet and considerate.

Cheon Tae-san had seen the material a year ago as well, and it said that talk of a match was passing between Dang Ga-ryeong and Seop Hyeon-rok of the Seop Estate. It seemed the thing had now come as far as a betrothal.

At the words Dang Ga-ryeong’s face clouded over. Had the match pleased her, she ought to have looked shy of it, or embarrassed.

Dang Ji-in said, offhandedly.

“Sister, shall I quietly poison the bastard for your sake?”

Startled out of her wits, Dang Ga-ryeong went so far as to clap a hand over his mouth.

“There is truly nothing this boy will not say. Anyone hearing it would think you meant it.”

For all that Dang Ga-ryeong was at her wits’ end, Dang Ji-in was perfectly composed.

“I do not understand why Father means to marry you off to that dreg of humanity from the Seop Estate. The Seop Estate is no better than a rich underworld faction.”

Dang Ga-ryeong shot him a sidelong look and muttered.

“Do not even think of it.”

“If the bastard doesn’t die, you can’t marry the man you like.”

In the end he could not tell what ought to be said from what ought not, and Dang Ga-ryeong took him by the scruff of the neck and went out of the carriage.

“You. Out here. You bastard. Come and take a beating from me for once.”

Rowdy as she carried on, Dang Ga-ryeong’s eyes held affection whenever they landed on Dang Ji-in. It was the same with Dang Jin-ok. They were fond of the youngest.

Brothers and sisters who love the youngest even as he damages the name of their house…

A good deal here did not add up.

After that, Dang Ji-in was not let back into the carriage until they reached the Dang Sect.

They put Dang Ji-in’s schooling in my hands and then keep him away from me — what is the reason for that?

Dang Jin-ok kept him at his side and nagged him without let-up. The nagging came down like a shower of rain, and still Dang Ji-in’s eyes stayed clear and bright, as untroubled as a lunatic past minding.

When the thick fog that had hidden everything an inch ahead lifted and the provincial capital at the heart of Sichuan appeared, I could not hold back my admiration as I entered it.

In the Three Kingdoms period it had been the capital of Shu Han², a region with a long and venerable history, and it went by another name besides: the land on which Heaven bestowed a granary. The Land of Abundance, in other words. The soil was rich enough to earn the name, and agriculture flourished there.

Ground so rich made the province famous for the abundance of its spirit medicines, and perhaps it was only natural that the Dang Sect, which set such store by medicinal herbs and poisonous ones, had put down its roots in Sichuan. Sichuan-grown herbs carried a name of their own, and the reputation for spirit medicines drew a great many herb-gatherers there to look for them.

The Emei Sect and the Qingcheng Sect, both pillars of the Nine Great Sects, were seated in the same province, and still the murim counted the Dang Sect first. Out of respect for the three schools together, people spoke of the Sichuan murim. The Namgung Clan held the first seat of the Five Great Clans, but in fame and in the reach of its name the Dang Sect of Sichuan yielded nothing to it.

I stood a while before the main gate, where the dignity of the Dang Sect of Sichuan showed itself, and took it in. Several dozen great tall pavilions stood in rows, and the whole of that ground was the Dang Sect. Outside the stone wall, which reached a full thirty feet, lay the famous Dang Family Quarter, where the Dang house’s collateral branches lived.

“Please remain at the Guest Pavilion. I shall report to the clan head and then attend you.”

Dang Jin-ok had grown a little more punctilious with me than when I first saw him. Punctilious did not mean well-disposed, of course; his eyes were as cold as ever.

They took the carriage with the poison men loaded on it and went into the Dang Sect.

“Brother, the Dang Sect really is a peculiar place. Building the Guest Pavilion outside the Dang Sect itself. Looked at one way, that’s rude past all bearing.”

“The Dang Sect’s history is what it is, and that’s why so many of the murim go along with it. The Wudang Sect has a dismounting stele too, hasn’t it?”

“The one that tells anybody at all to get down off his horse and show respect?”

“Right. Wudang has that dismounting stele as well. Nobody picks a quarrel over it. It’s the same with the Dang Sect.”

Yeo-seol had picked up a good deal of the murim’s common knowledge by now, so we could talk about a fair range of things.

She looked up at the high stone wall and muttered.

“I’m worried about my servant. He carried the Formless Poison out in secret and used it in a battle, so I don’t think it’ll end with a scolding.”

“The code of the house is so strict there’s no telling what punishment will come down.”

I was quietly worried myself. Dang Ji-in was the reason the Azure Dragon Corps had come through with so little damage; without him, not only the Dang Sect warriors but the Corps as well would never have escaped annihilation.

“I’ll explain later why I brought Yeo-seol along to the Dang Sect, so until then you must never let anyone see what your martial arts can do. Understood?”

Yeo-seol stared straight at me, then broke into a grin.

“Brother, you mean to do something dangerous, don’t you? You mean to steal something from the Dang Sect?”

I gave a start.

Since when has Yeo-seol been this quick on the uptake?

I gave an awkward laugh.

“Yeo-seol, I think we’d better be careful here about what we say and do. There are a great many people watching us.”

She caught my meaning at once.

“I felt it too.”

“Don’t practice your martial arts here either.”

“Then what am I supposed to do with myself?”

“You can read books.”

Yeo-seol went sullen at that. At times like this she was a girl through and through.

“I want to live as I’m drawn to live, not a life of being dragged about. It isn’t easy.”

At her words I reached to stroke her head, then checked myself. Yeo-seol took my hand and drew it down over her own hair.

“When Yeo-seol is grown, she may live that way.”

She raised her head and looked up at me.

“Is that so? Then I’ll bear with it until then, I suppose.”

“Right.”

Now and then I felt something like betrayal at how fast Yeo-seol was growing up.

Two hours later, Dang Jin-ok came to the annex where I had unpacked my things.

“The clan head asks to see you. Please put your dress in order and come out.”

I had already bathed and come out, so I had only to put my clothes on before I went.

The meeting with the Dang Sect’s sect leader had come sooner than I expected. With the matter of Dang Ji-in on their hands, I had thought no interview would be possible before tomorrow.

So at last I am to see the Dang Sect’s sect leader, Dang Myeong the Thousand-Hand Soul Snatcher?

The anticipation ran as high as it had when I went to meet Mak Yeo-heun the Unorthodox Supreme, and perhaps that was why my step had strength in it.