“Phew.”
It was only around dusk, when the light had begun to fade, that Jo Won finally reached Songpa Market. He pretended to wipe away sweat that had never even formed.
He had no choice. Even for Jo Won, pulling a cart loaded with ten thousand books was no easy task.
“If only I’d had sturdier carts, I would’ve gotten here sooner.”
Jo Won smacked his lips regretfully. If he increased his speed, the carts looked liable to break under the weight, so he had been forced to take his time.
Clatter, clatter.
Pulling two carts, Jo Won drew every eye in Songpa Market. But as evening fell, the crowds gradually thinned, and cooking smoke began to rise alongside the faint lights of a few taverns and eateries.
Thump-thump, thump-thump!
Apparently Songpa Market had its share of gisaeng houses, because the lively sound of drums and hourglass drums echoed through the streets in the distance. Just then, someone tugged at Jo Won’s hem.
“Hm?”
“Are you looking for somewhere to sleep?”
Jo Won looked down and saw a child who seemed to be about seven years old. The child wore shabby clothes, but his round eyes and rather cute features stood out.
“Yeah. Do you know anywhere?”
The child poked his head out and looked at the two carts rising behind Jo Won like mountains.
“I know a tavern. Give me one pun, and I’ll tell you where it is.”
“Hmm. I don’t have any Joseon money.”
He did have silver fragments, though. Jo Won took a piece of silver from the money pouch at his waist and held it out.
“If you can find somewhere that will keep this luggage safe too, I’ll give you this.”
“That’s…”
The child’s eyes widened. Though he was young, he seemed to recognize that the fingernail-sized object in Jo Won’s hand was silver.
“I give you my word.”
Jo Won smiled and casually ruffled the child’s hair. The child then turned bold and made a counteroffer.
“If you give me something bigger than that, I’ll tell you something more important.”
“Something more important?”
Jo Won tilted his head. The child’s expression suddenly changed, and he began tugging Jo Won along by the hem of his clothes.
“Just go this way. Follow me.”
As he spoke, the child signaled to Jo Won with his eyes. Jo Won pretended to play along and followed behind him.
The child sidled up beside Jo Won and asked,
“Mister, my legs hurt. Can you give me a ride on the cart?”
“Hmm. Shall I?”
Jo Won lifted the child up as requested. Taking advantage of the moment when Jo Won drew close to pick him up, the child spoke quickly.
“There are people after you, Mister. Scary men who wear swords. They go around calling themselves the Geomgye. They told me to bring you to them.”
Thud.
Even after hearing that, Jo Won’s expression did not change as he set the child on the cart. Then he smiled and lightly pinched the child’s cheek.
“It’s all right. Lead the way.”
“Mis—”
Just as the startled child began to say something, Jo Won gave a slight shake of his head. He meant for the child not to do anything that might draw unnecessary attention.
The child let out a small sigh as he looked at Jo Won.
“Jeez. I thought you were a rich Mister, so I was just trying to get some money out of you.”
Jo Won burst out laughing when he heard the child mutter that. He could hardly remember ever being treated this way, but it wasn’t so bad.
At least it meant no one would be calling him some strange nickname like One Freak, as they had in the Central Plains. Not even a single person recognized him, and for some reason, that made his heart feel lighter.
“Since I’m a rich Mister, it’s fine if you give me a few pun.”
“Those bad men don’t know when to stop. They probably won’t be satisfied until they skin you alive.”
The child put on a frightened expression as he mentioned the Geomgye. Since they were vile enough to use a child for their robberies, Jo Won could roughly imagine how bad they were.
But in the Central Plains, people like that gathered into black-path gangs, and the very pinnacle of the black path was, of course, the Four Sovereigns Fortress.
No matter how frightening and cruel the hoodlums in the back alleys of a Joseon marketplace might be, could they even reach the feet of the Four Sovereigns Fortress?
“This Mister has met people even scarier than them, so I’ll be fine.”
Jo Won let the child in on a little secret. But the child stared blankly at him before shaking his head.
“Don’t pretend to be tough for no reason. Just give them whatever they ask for. Otherwise, you’re the only one who’ll get hurt.”
Apparently Jo Won did not look strong to the child in the slightest. Jo Won shrugged as if to say it was fine, and the child, apparently thinking he was putting on a foolish show of bravado, clicked his tongue like an adult.
“Turn down that alley and go inside.”
Boing!
With that, the child jumped off the cart. When Jo Won turned to look at him, the child said,
“Wait here a little. I don’t know if the police officers will do anything, but I’ll go to the magistrate’s office and ask.”
“What about an adult?”
“The taverns are busy right now. And my dad isn’t around.”
The child spoke to Jo Won with surprising maturity, as though his earlier act of tugging at Jo Won’s clothes and pretending to be cute had all been an act. He even lectured Jo Won.
“My mother says you should know your limits before you pick a fight. So don’t go getting yourself killed for no reason. Just run away.”
“With this heavy load?”
“Oh. Right.”
The child stared at Jo Won. Then he placed a hand against Jo Won’s leg and said—he was too short to reach his shoulder—
“Hang in there for a little while. If it’s Mister Oheung or Mister Obok, they might agree to help you.”
“Oheung? Obok?”
“You little brat!”
Just then, a hoodlum emerged from the alley and growled viciously. He was growling at the child, not Jo Won.
“They made me do it, but watch what you say. If you keep that up, you might not even get a bowl of soup when you come to the tavern.”
“That little runt doesn’t back down an inch!”
“And you call yourselves adults when you make a kid do this?”
The child had plenty of guts. Even facing a hoodlum who looked like trouble at a glance, he did not give up a single word in their argument.
“Hey, bro. Come in quietly while I’m asking nicely.”
When the child ran off on his short legs, the hoodlum crooked a finger at Jo Won. Jo Won said to him,
“This is awfully heavy. Could you give me a hand pushing it?”
“…What?”
The hoodlum stared at Jo Won in disbelief. Instead of being frightened at the sight of him, Jo Won had calmly asked him to help pull a cart, and that rubbed him the wrong way.
“Or should I leave it here? The road’s narrow.”
Jo Won pointed back and forth between the carts and the passage. The road was too narrow to take both carts through at once. There was only enough room to pull them one at a time.
“Let’s go quietly. Quietly.”
“If I intended to go noisily, I wouldn’t have come all the way here. Hurry up and push.”
Jo Won shoved one of the carts into the hoodlum’s hands and walked inside. The hoodlum stared after Jo Won, who had walked in under his own power without even being ordered to, with an expression that said he had never seen such a lunatic.
“Is he out of his mind? Eating that stuff will give him a stomachache.”
Despite saying that, the hoodlum sneakily peered inside the cart. Just as the brat from the shantytown had reported, it was packed with books.
“Those damn Hangang Gang idiots. They can’t even pick up a fallen piece of cake.”
The hoodlum—or rather, the man who called himself Geomgye—chuckled as he went inside. Once you entered, a small open yard lay beyond. That yard belonged to the Geomgye, and no one entered it recklessly.
Clatter, clatter.
“Oh. Is this guy actually pretty gutsy?”
When Jo Won entered the small yard, the Geomgye scattered around it watched him with gleaming eyes, curiosity piqued.
“Will you let me go if I give you money?”
Jo Won said only what he needed to say, whether or not they showed interest in him. The Geomgye glanced at the money pouch hanging from his waist, then grinned, exposing yellow teeth.
“Let’s see how much you have.”
“You said you’d skin me alive. Guess that wasn’t quite true?”
The Geomgye threw back their heads and laughed, yellow teeth bared.
“You’ve got some guts. How dare you stay so bold after seeing your Geomgye elders?”
There were about fifteen members of the Geomgye, and every one of them carried a blade. Just the blades alone looked worth several dozen nyang.
Jo Won narrowed his eyes at the fact that every back-alley hoodlum carried a blade.
‘They’re being sponsored.’
Jo Won saw at a glance that these were not weapons the hoodlums had bought with money they had earned themselves. Hoodlums with that kind of ability would be on the level of a black-path gang in the Central Plains.
But even black-path gangs only existed in major cities in the Central Plains. Hanyang had a commercial district large enough to qualify as such a major city, yet Jo Won had not found a single trace of anyone in Joseon who practiced martial arts.
Unlike the Central Plains, Joseon’s kings had apparently been deathly afraid of private armies maintained by powerful families and had banned them by law altogether. It seemed that was truly the case.
Which meant someone had supplied these men with their blades.
“How about it? If you hand over everything you have, I’ll grant you the honor of joining our Songpa Gang.”
The Geomgye chief made the offer with a pompous air. Curious about the name Songpa Gang, Jo Won asked,
“Is the Songpa Gang the only one running Songpa Market?”
“Who else would there be? There’s the Jongno Gang in Jongno, the Ihyeon Gang in Ihyeon, and the Chilpae Gang in Chilpae, but…”
“So there are others.”
At Jo Won’s question, the Geomgye chief’s eyelid twitched once. Jo Won was right. The recently established Songpa Market had yet to fall entirely under the control of a single faction.
“I imagine all three of those places have people here. Isn’t that right?”
“Hmph! What good will knowing that do you?”
When the Geomgye chief barked at him, Jo Won lifted his head and looked up at the sky. Then he murmured,
“Why is it that everywhere people live, things are so much the same?”
“What’s he talking about?”
“Has he lost his mind?”
The Geomgye snickered and mocked Jo Won. Lowering his head from where he had been gazing at the sky, Jo Won slowly looked around at the Geomgye.
“Why are there people everywhere who covet what belongs to others instead of working to earn their own?”
“What the hell does he keep babbling about?”
“Big Brother, what should we do?”
The Geomgye scowled and began rising from their seats one by one. Their chief, Yellow Tooth, stared at Jo Won with a cruel expression, yellow teeth exposed.
“What do you think?”
Swish.
A sharply honed knife used to gut seafood in Chilpae Market, where fishmongers were concentrated, appeared in Yellow Tooth’s hand.
“We’ll turn him into a corpse and take everything he has.”
At Yellow Tooth’s words, the surrounding members of the Geomgye formed similarly cruel smiles.
“Go peacefully. Stay still, and I’ll send you off without any pain. How about it?”
Jo Won said nothing. He simply watched as the Geomgye approached him, each one drawing a blade of some kind.