Chapter 22: Show Me

The Black Boar gambling house smelled like sweat, spilled rice wine and bad decisions.

Low ceiling. No windows. Dice clattering on a dozen tables. Men in sleeveless shirts with boar tattoos on their necks, arms, one guy on his bald head. Every single one of them stopped what they were doing and turned around when we walked in.

Me, in my cleanest robe, holding a ledger.

And Hong Seo-rin, in her dark silk, jade pin, abacus under one arm, walking into a room full of leg-breakers like she was walking into a tea shop.

She didn’t look left. She didn’t look right. She walked straight to the back, where a man the size of a wardrobe was sitting on a pile of cushions eating a whole roast duck with his hands.

Pyo Gwang-chul. The Boar.

He was huge. Not fat. Huge. Neck as thick as my waist. Little eyes. Grease on his chin. And sitting next to him, with a bandage wrapped around the back of his hand and a look on his face like he wanted to eat me instead of the duck, was my old friend Boar Neck.

[No target detected.]

The system actually said that. Out loud. In my head. Like it was disappointed.

Yeah, me too.

"Bookkeeper," the Boar rumbled. "I didn’t send for you."

"The guild sent me." Seo-rin stopped in front of his cushions. "Mu-jin. The ledger."

I handed it to her. My hands were not shaking. Okay. A little.

She opened it to the page. Turned it around. Held it out.

"Four hundred silver," she said. "Borrowed the winter before last. Ninety repaid. Three hundred and ten outstanding. Interest at the guild rate of two parts in a hundred per month." Clack. "Which brings us to... three hundred and ninety-four silver. Today. Tomorrow, a little more."

The Boar stopped chewing.

"The guild’s been patient," he said.

"The guild is always patient." Clack. "Until someone breaks the legs of a young man the guild has hired."

Every head in the room turned toward me.

Great.

The Boar looked at me. Up. Down. Slowly. Little eyes, like a pig deciding if something is food.

"This?" he said. "The guild hired THIS?"

"I’m very good at carrying ledgers," I said.

Somebody behind me snorted. Boar Neck did not.

The Boar looked back at Seo-rin. "Elder Gu paid me."

"Twenty silver." Seo-rin didn’t even blink. "I know. I also know the guild can call your full debt by sundown. Three hundred and ninety-four silver, or this building, the dice tables, and the boat you keep at the north pier. The one you think nobody knows about."

The Boar’s face went very still.

"Or," said Seo-rin, "the guild forgets the interest for one season. And you tell Elder Gu that the Baek boy fled the city. Took a barge south. Never coming back." Clack. "Twenty silver from an old man. Or eighty-four silver of interest from the guild. Do the arithmetic, Pyo Gwang-chul. I already did it for you."

Nobody moved.

The dice had stopped clattering. The whole room was holding its breath.

Then the Boar threw back his head and laughed. A big, greasy, belly-shaking laugh.

"Bookkeeper," he said, wiping his eyes with a duck leg. "One day someone is going to cut your throat."

"Not today," said Seo-rin.

"No." He tore off another piece of duck. "Not today. Fine. The boy fled. Barge south. Very sad. Elder Gu will cry." He pointed the duck leg at me. "But if I see your face at my docks again, Baek, I’ll forget the arithmetic."

"Fair," I said.

Boar Neck stood up. Fast. Fist clenched. His bandaged hand.

The Boar didn’t even look at him. He just said, "Sit," and Boar Neck sat. Like a dog.

Seo-rin closed the ledger.

Clack.

"Pleasure doing business," she said, and turned around and walked out. I followed her. Every eye in the room followed us both.

I didn’t breathe until we were outside.

We were two streets away, in a narrow lane between a tofu shop and a lantern maker, when she stopped walking.

She turned around. Grabbed the front of my robe with both hands. Shoved me back against the wall of the tofu shop.

And kissed me.

Hard. Fast. Teeth. Her whole body pressed into mine. Her abacus digging into my ribs. Her hands shaking.

Shaking.

When she pulled back, her face was flushed and her pupils were huge.

"That," she said, "is for standing still while a man with a cleaver stared at you for a quarter hour."

"He had a cleaver?"

"Behind his cushion. Third Boar on the left was holding a hatchet under the table." She was breathing fast. "I counted eleven weapons in that room. You didn’t move once."

"I was too scared to move."

"I know." She kissed me again, shorter. "It looked brave from the outside."

[Target: Hong Seo-rin.] [Desire — MAXIMUM.]

The window flashed. Like the system was clapping.

She let go of my robe. Fixed her jade pin. Smoothed her silk.

"Go to your lesson," she said, cool as ice again. "Cha Mi-ran doesn’t like waiting either."

"How do you know about—"

"Baek Mu-jin." Clack. "Stop asking me that."

The east training hall. Last bell gone. One lantern at the end of the corridor.

I knocked.

"Come."

Instructor Cha wasn’t standing in the middle of the floor this time. She wasn’t sitting on her desk either.

She was sitting on the straw mat. Cross-legged. Hair down — first time I’d ever seen it out of that high ponytail. Black and straight and falling all the way to the floor around her. No sash. Her practice uniform hanging loose and open at the neck.

No swords.

[Target Detected.]

"Close the door," she said.

I closed it.

"Bar it."

I barred it.

"Sit." She pointed at the mat in front of her. "Close. Knees touching."

I sat. Knees touching.

She looked at me for a long, long time.

"I said I wasn’t going to wait for ’show me,’" she said quietly. "So. Show me."

My mouth went dry.

"Show you... what, exactly?"

"How it works." She took my hand. Put it flat on my own stomach, over my dantian. Then put her hand on top of mine. "Four women in you. Still four. But the cold one — the metal — is humming. Like she touched you this afternoon." Her eyebrow went up. "The bookkeeper."

God. Was there anyone in this city who couldn’t read me like a book?

"I want to understand it," she said. "How your qi takes theirs. How it braids. What happens in the moment it starts." Her fingers tightened on mine. "I’ve studied cultivation for twenty years. I’ve never felt anything like you."

I looked down at our hands. Hers on mine. Both of them on my stomach.

Then I turned my hand over under hers. Laced our fingers together.

"Can I show you something?" I said.

She nodded. Slowly.

I lifted our joined hands off my stomach. And put them on hers.

Right below her navel. Right over her own dantian.

She went completely still.

"It doesn’t start with qi," I said. "It starts with this."

I leaned in and kissed her.

She didn’t kiss back right away. She just sat there, stiff, like she was analyzing it. Then I felt it. Under our hands. Under her skin. Her own qi — that cold sharp ice needle — shifting. Moving. Warming up.

She gasped against my mouth.

"You feel that?" I whispered.

"...Yes."

"That’s you. Not me. That’s what happens when you stop analyzing for five seconds."

She pulled back an inch and stared at me. Her eyes were huge. Her cheeks were red.

"Again," she said.

I kissed her again. Slower. Deeper. And I moved our joined hands, just a little, in slow circles on her stomach. And under our hands, I could feel her qi moving with them. Spinning. Getting hotter.

[Desire +20.]

"Oh," she breathed. "Oh, that’s—"

"Twenty years," I said against her lips. "And nobody ever showed you this?"

"Nobody ever showed me anything." Her voice cracked. "My husband falls asleep before the bell. My students are scared of me. I’ve spent six years teaching boys how to hold a sword, and nobody has ever—"

I let go of her hand. Moved mine up. Slid it inside the loose opening of her practice uniform.

She stopped talking.

"Tell me if you want me to stop," I said.

"Don’t you dare," said Instructor Cha Mi-ran.

Then she grabbed my head with both hands and kissed me like she was trying to win a duel.

She pushed me down on the straw mat. Climbed on top of me. Her hair fell around us like a black curtain, blocking out the lantern. Her uniform fell open the rest of the way. And for the first time, the woman who’d put me on my back forty times in two lessons was on top of me for a completely different reason.

"Is this the lesson?" she gasped, as my hands found her hips.

"This is the lesson."

"Then teach me properly."

So I did.

And somewhere in the middle of it, her ice-cold qi went from cold, to warm, to so hot that the lantern at the end of the room flickered—

[Target: Cha Mi-ran.]

[Desire — MAXIMUM.]

[Harmony established: Cha Mi-ran.]

Her yin hit me like a blade. Thin. Sharp. Clean. It went straight through every other yin in my belly like a sword through silk—

Five now. And this one didn’t want to braid. It cut straight through the other four like it was looking for a fight.

[Warning: Yin overflow.]

[Host meridians under strain.]

[Refine immediately.]

Uh oh.

I don’t actually remember how the lesson ended. I remember her laughing breathlessly into my neck. I remember her saying "Six years," over and over, like she couldn’t believe it. I remember her tying her sash back on crooked and pushing me out the door and saying "Same time in three days" with a look on her face that would melt steel.

I remember walking across the dark training yard toward the gate.

And I remember that it was very, very hot.

Not outside. Inside. My belly was on fire. Water and wind and ink and coins and blade, five yins total, all spinning, all fighting, crashing into each other like five cats in a sack. My vision went blurry around the edges. My legs went wobbly. Sweat was pouring down my face even though the night was cold.

[Yin overflow: critical.]

I tried to braid them. The way Cha taught me. I couldn’t even find the strands.

The academy gate was right there. Ten steps.

Five.

The ground tilted.

I fell.

And someone caught me.

Strong arms. Plum-colored sleeves. Sandalwood and ink and something darker underneath.

I looked up. Way up. Into a long elegant face with one gray streak at the temple, and dark lips, and eyes that had seen through a thousand liars.

"Oh dear," said Headmistress Hwang Yu-seon softly, holding me up like I weighed nothing. "Five already? You greedy boy."

Then everything went black.