Chapter 13: The Palanquin

I got in.

What else was I gonna do? Say no to a woman whose family could buy the academy and burn it for fun?

The palanquin was tiny. Way tinier than it looked from the outside. One padded bench, silk curtains on both sides, a little lacquered shelf with a teapot on it. Madam Gwak was sitting at one end with her back straight, hands folded in her lap, spectacles catching the light through the curtain.

There was exactly enough room for me if I sat with my knee pressed against hers.

So I did.

"Home," she said to the bearers. "The long way."

The whole box lurched up into the air. I grabbed the wall. She didn’t even sway.

For a while, she didn’t say anything. The palanquin bounced along. Street noise came through the curtains — hawkers, carts, somebody’s chickens. She stared straight ahead like I wasn’t there.

Then—

"Instructor Cha," she said.

Oh. So that’s what this was.

"She called me to her office."

"I saw."

"For remedial lessons. I’m failing her class."

"Remedial." She said it like it tasted bad. "Private?"

"...Every third evening."

Her jaw went tight. Very tight. A little muscle jumped right under her ear.

"Cha Mi-ran," she said, "is married to Deputy Headmaster Ryu. She is a respected instructor. She sits beside me at the donors’ banquet every spring, and she always, always takes the last plum cake."

I blinked.

"...Are you jealous?"

"I am a widow of a respected family," she said, still staring straight ahead. "I do not get jealous."

The palanquin bounced. Her knee pressed harder into mine. She didn’t move it.

"You said the fifth day," I said.

"I know what I said."

"It’s been one day."

"I KNOW what I said."

She finally turned her head and looked at me. And her face — that strict, perfect, ice-cold face — cracked right down the middle.

"I told myself five days," she said, quiet and fast, like she was confessing to a crime. "Five days was reasonable. Five days was dignified. I would go home, run my shops, raise my son, and in five days I would come back and we’d have a... civilized arrangement."

"And?"

"And I didn’t sleep." She pushed her spectacles up her nose. Her hand was shaking a little. "I lay in my bed last night and I didn’t sleep at all. I kept... remembering. That stool. Your hands. Lying to my son through a door." She closed her eyes. "I’ve been the most proper woman in Hangju for eight years, Baek Mu-jin. And I lasted one day."

[Desire +15.]

God.

I didn’t say anything clever. I didn’t have anything clever.

I just reached over and took her spectacles off. Folded them. Put them on the little shelf next to the teapot.

She looked so different without them. Softer. Younger. Her eyes were brown, and wet at the corners.

"I can’t see," she said.

"You don’t need to."

I kissed her.

She kissed back like she’d been waiting all night. Because she had.

You ever made out with a woman in a box being carried down the street by four guys who don’t know what’s going on inside?

I recommend it.

Every time the bearers hit a bump, she fell harder into me. Every time they turned a corner, she grabbed my robe to keep from sliding. At some point she stopped grabbing my robe and started grabbing underneath it. At some point after that, she was in my lap, knees on either side of my hips on that tiny padded bench, her navy robe unbuttoned all the way down, her hair falling out of the bun one pin at a time.

"The bearers," I breathed into her neck.

"They’re paid not to hear things."

"Are they paid enough?"

"I’ll double it."

The palanquin bounced over a rut. She gasped. Loud.

Outside, one of the bearers coughed. Very politely.

She pressed her face into my shoulder and shook. Laughing. That real laugh from the floor of my room, the one that scared her.

"I am a terrible mother," she whispered into my skin. "And a terrible widow. And a terrible woman."

"You’re a great kisser."

"Shut up." She grabbed my face with both hands. "Shut up and stop being nice. I don’t know what to do when you’re nice."

[Desire +20.]

I’m keeping the rest of that ride to myself.

But I’ll say this: the long way through Hangju takes almost an hour. And those bearers are earning double this month.

Somewhere near the river, it happened.

She was slumped against my chest, catching her breath, her bun completely destroyed. I was running my fingers through her hair. And the window popped up right in front of my face.

[Target: Gwak Ji-yeon.]

[Desire — MAXIMUM.]

[Harmony established: Gwak Ji-yeon.]

The coal in my belly flared again. Third time.

And hers was different from the other two. Not warm water. Not desert wind. Hers was cool. Sharp. Thin and dense, like ink soaking into paper. It slid into my dantian and settled right in the middle of the others, very neat, very orderly.

Of course. Even her yin was proper.

I almost laughed.

"What?" she mumbled.

"Nothing. You’re just... very you."

She lifted her head and squinted at me without her spectacles. "Is that a compliment?"

"Biggest one I’ve got."

She looked at me for a long moment. Then she put her head back down on my chest.

"Gi-chul saw me take you," she said quietly. "At the gate. He was standing right there with that Gong boy."

Shit.

"What did he say?"

"Nothing. He just looked at me. The way he looks at a math problem he doesn’t like." She sighed. "I’ll tell him I’m sponsoring you. The academy has a program for promising disciples from disgraced families. It’s even true. I’ll make it true tonight."

"You’re gonna pay my academy fees?"

"I’m going to pay your academy fees, your instructor’s fees and your room at that disgusting inn." She poked my chest. "Not because of this. Because you did the work on that formation, and you got thrown out of your clan, and nobody else will. And because if you’re going to be Cha Mi-ran’s remedial student, you are going to have a sponsor whose name she has to see every time she looks at your file."

I stared at her.

She stared back. Blind as a bat. Totally serious.

"...You’re definitely jealous."

"I am NOT—"

I kissed her again. She stopped arguing.

My eleven silver, somewhere in my robe, quietly wept with joy.

The palanquin set me down in front of the Blue Willow Inn just as the lanterns were being lit.

Madam Gwak had her spectacles back on. Her bun was perfect again. Her robe was buttoned all the way to the throat. You’d never know.

Except for her lips. They always give her away.

"Fifth day," she said through the curtain. "I mean it this time."

"Sure you do."

The curtain snapped shut. The bearers picked her up and trotted off, and I swear one of them winked at me.

I climbed the front stairs to the top floor. Slowly. My legs felt like noodles. My dantian felt like a pot of soup with three different ingredients swirling around. All I wanted was my bed, my cracked jar, and about twelve hours of sleep.

I turned onto the walkway.

And stopped.

Yeon-hee was sitting on the floor outside my door.

Knees pulled up. Lantern next to her. Still in the borrowed gray robe from this morning, hair down, a little cloth bundle in her lap that smelled like dumplings.

She looked up at me. And smiled. A little shy.

"He left at noon," she said. "I know I said tomorrow night. But tomorrow felt really far away."

Then the door next to mine slid open.

Ayla leaned in the doorway. Bare feet. White dress. A wine jug hanging from two fingers.

She looked at Yeon-hee on the floor.

Yeon-hee looked at her.

Neither of them looked at me.

"Physician," Ayla said slowly.

"Neighbor," Yeon-hee said, just as slowly.

The lantern flickered.

I stood there between them, with a widow’s yin still settling in my belly and her bite marks fresh on my shoulder, and I thought about my last life. About sitting alone in the dark with nothing but a screen.

I wouldn’t trade this for anything.

Even if it was about to kill me.