Chapter 12: Remedial Lessons

Instructor Cha’s office was at the very end of the east training hall, past the weapon racks, past the dummies with the stuffing hanging out, down a hallway that smelled like sweat and sword oil.

I knocked.

"Come."

One word. That voice. My knees almost went.

I slid the door open.

It wasn’t really an office. It was half office, half private training room. A desk piled with scrolls on one side. A polished wooden floor on the other, with a rack of practice swords on the wall and a thin straw mat in the middle. Sunlight coming in through a high window, landing right on her.

She was sitting on the edge of her desk. Legs crossed. Practice uniform. That black sash. One sandal dangling off her toes, swinging a little.

Up close she was even worse. Mid-thirties. Sharp cheekbones. Dark red lips. Her ponytail was so tight it pulled her eyes up at the corners, like a cat. And her uniform was technically regulation, the same as every other instructor’s.

It just didn’t look like it on her.

[Target Detected.]

"Close the door, Baek Mu-jin."

I closed the door.

She didn’t say anything for a while. Just looked at me. Up. Down. Not the way the inn women looked at me. This was different. This was the way Tae-man looks at a pork bun — not hungry, exactly. Interested. Measuring.

"Three weeks ago," she said finally, "you came to my sword theory class half asleep, couldn’t name the five footwork principles, and tripped over your own sheath during the drill."

"...That sounds like me."

"Two weeks ago, you missed three classes. One week ago, you missed all of them." She swung the sandal. "And today, you walked out there and did the Three Willows Formation without one shaking hand. Without losing your breath. Without sweating."

She hopped off the desk. Walked toward me. Slowly. Barefoot on the polished floor.

"So tell me," she said. "What did you take?"

"Take?"

"A pill. A tonic. Some black-market herb from the docks." She stopped in front of me. She was shorter than me, but she stood like she was looking down. "Something happened to your qi between last week and this morning. I could feel it from the platform. Third-rate trash doesn’t just wake up warm."

Okay. She could sense qi. That meant she was at least Second-rate. Probably more.

Shit.

"I didn’t take anything," I said. "I’ve just been... training."

"Training."

"Very hard."

She smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile.

Then she moved.

I didn’t see it. I swear I didn’t see it. One second she was standing in front of me, and the next second my legs were gone and I was flat on my back on the straw mat and she was kneeling on my chest with two fingers pressed against my throat.

All the air went out of me.

"Training," she said again, from above me. Not even breathing hard.

Yeah. Okay. Second-rate at least. Maybe First.

And I was Third-rate. Raw yin or not.

She leaned down. Close. Her ponytail fell over her shoulder and brushed my cheek. And then she did something I really didn’t expect.

She sniffed me.

Right at the neck. Long and slow. Like Ayla had.

Then she went very still.

"...Oh," she said.

"What?"

"Yin." She sniffed again. Her eyes narrowed. "Two kinds. Not yours. One soft, like warm water. One hot and dry. Like desert sand." She sat back on my chest and stared down at me. "You didn’t take a pill at all."

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. She was sitting on my lungs.

And also on something else, a little lower, that had noticed exactly who was sitting on it.

She noticed too. She shifted her weight. Slowly. On purpose.

Her eyebrow went up.

[Desire +15.]

"Two women," she said quietly. "Two women, in what, two days? And somehow you came out of it with more qi than you went in." She tilted her head. "I’ve heard of dual cultivation manuals. Old ones. Banned ones. The kind sects burn."

"I don’t have a manual."

"No?"

"I swear on my mother’s hairpin."

She studied my face for a long second. Whatever she saw there, she believed it. Or at least she decided it was more interesting not to push.

She climbed off me. Walked back to her desk. Sat on the edge again and swung the sandal like nothing happened.

I lay on the mat and breathed. Every breath hurt.

"Get up, Baek Mu-jin."

I got up. Slowly.

And that’s when I saw it.

On her desk, half buried under a stack of exam scrolls, there was a sheet of rice paper sticking out. Ink painting. Very detailed. Very... anatomical.

Of her.

In absolutely nothing.

She saw me looking. She didn’t hide it. She just pulled it out the rest of the way and held it up like she was showing me a student’s homework.

"Nam Gi-chul," she said. "I confiscated it last month. He left it inside a theory scroll he handed in." She looked at it with her head tilted. "The hips are wrong. And he gave me a mole I don’t have."

I choked.

"I kept it," she said, "because it’s the most flattering thing anyone’s done for me in about six years."

She put it back under the scrolls.

Then she looked at me. And for the first time, the hard instructor face slipped. Just a little.

"I’m married to Deputy Headmaster Ryu," she said. "Did you know that?"

I didn’t. Deputy Headmaster Ryu was about a hundred years old. He had a beard down to his belt and fell asleep during his own speeches.

"My family arranged it. Good match. Great connections. He’s very kind. He’s very respected." She swung the sandal. "He’s asleep by the evening bell every single night. In separate rooms. For six years."

Oh.

There it was. Her spark.

Six years of kind, respected, asleep.

[Desire +20.]

"So here’s what’s going to happen," she said, and the instructor voice came right back. "You’re failing my class. Officially. You’ve missed too many sessions. Which means you need remedial lessons. Private. With me. Here. Every third evening, after the last bell, when the hall is empty."

I stared at her.

"Remedial... sword theory?"

"Sword theory. Footwork. Qi circulation." She looked at me through her lashes. "Whatever you’re doing with your women is wasting half of what you’re getting. Raw yin just sitting in your belly doing nothing. Slipping out every time you breathe. You don’t know how to refine it, do you?"

"...No. Not really."

"I do." She smiled. That not-nice smile again. "And in return, Baek Mu-jin, you’re going to tell me exactly how you’re doing it."

She hopped off the desk, walked past me to the door, and slid it open for me.

"Or show me," she added, very quietly, as I walked out. "Whichever you prefer."

The door slid shut behind me.

I stood in that hallway that smelled like sweat and sword oil for a long, long time.

She’d put me on my back in one move. She could probably kill me with two fingers.

And she wanted private lessons.

God, I love this life.

Tae-man was waiting by the academy gate with Gi-chul, of all people. They were both eating skewers. Apparently surviving the presentation together made you friends.

"WELL?" Tae-man said. "What did she want?"

"Remedial lessons," I said.

Gi-chul dropped his skewer. "With INSTRUCTOR CHA? Private?"

"Every third evening."

Gi-chul made a sound like a teakettle.

"Oh, by the way," I told him. "She says the hips are wrong. And you gave her a mole she doesn’t have."

He turned white. Then red. Then he ran away again.

Tae-man watched him go, chewing slowly.

"Bro," he said. "I’m starting to feel bad for that kid."

"Me too."

We walked out the gate together, and I was already thinking about the ferry and the inn and maybe, maybe, actually sleeping for once in this life—

When I saw the palanquin.

Black lacquer. Four bored bearers. The Gwak family crest on the side.

Parked right across the street. Waiting.

The curtain moved. Just a crack. Just enough for me to see a pair of wire spectacles, catching the afternoon sun.

"Baek Mu-jin," Madam Gwak said from inside. Very calm. Very cold.

It wasn’t the fifth day. It wasn’t even the second day.

"Get in."

Tae-man looked at the palanquin. Looked at me. Slowly put the rest of his skewer in his mouth.

"Bro," he said, chewing. "I’m gonna take the ferry alone."