Chapter 33: Number Six

You can’t fight a Ministry.

I knew that before I even got my pants on. You can throw a stool through a ceiling at a clan elder. You can jump off a roof. You can hide behind a hundred laundry women. But a Vice Minister of Rites from the capital, with six guards and an imperial seal on his carriage?

That’s not a fight. That’s a tax.

I ran to the academy anyway.

The black carriage was sitting in the main courtyard like a coffin. Six guards around it in gray uniforms with swords that looked like they’d actually been used. Lanterns everywhere.

And coming down the steps of the headmistress’s building, with Hwang Yu-seon walking beside him, was a thin man in dark official robes. Neat gray beard. Sharp nose. The same big serious eyes as his daughter.

He stopped when he saw me.

I was standing at the bottom of the stairs, sweaty, oily, bandaged, with my robe tied crooked and a wooden practice sword still in my hand because I forgot to put it down.

"And this," said Hwang, perfectly smooth, "is Baek Mu-jin. The guide I assigned to your daughter."

The Vice Minister looked me up and down.

Slowly.

The same way his daughter did, that first day on these stairs.

"The guide," he said.

"Yes, sir."

"The one my daughter mentions in every letter." His eyes went to my bandages. To my bruises. To the oil shining on my neck. "Every letter. Three letters in eleven days. Each one longer than the last."

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

"She says you showed her the bell tower," he said. "And kept her away from the docks."

"...I tried, sir."

He looked at me for a long, long moment. His face didn’t move at all. It was like looking at a closed door.

Then he said, very quietly, so only I could hear:

"She has never once in her life written me a letter about anything except sword forms."

And he walked past me to his carriage.

I stood there. My heart was going like a war drum.

Hwang came down the last step and stopped beside me.

"He’s not a fool," she murmured. "Don’t mistake him for one."

"Does he know?"

"He knows his daughter." She glanced at me sideways. "He doesn’t know anything he can prove."

"She leaves at dawn."

"She does." Hwang watched the Vice Minister climb into his carriage. "He’s staying in the guest pavilion tonight. His guards will be outside the women’s dormitory until sunrise." A pause. "All six of them."

Six guards. One door. One window.

I couldn’t even get to her to say goodbye.

Hwang looked down at me. Then she did something I’d never seen her do. She sighed.

"The Vice Minister," she said, "is very fond of go. I offered him a game tonight. In my office. He accepted." She smoothed her plum sleeve. "I play very, very slowly."

I stared at her.

"How slowly?"

"Until dawn, if necessary." She started walking away. "Go talk to your bookkeeper. Guards drink. And Cha Mi-ran knows every creaking floorboard in that dormitory."

She didn’t look back.

"One night, boy," said Hwang Yu-seon. "Don’t waste it."

I’m not going to tell you everything that happened in the next hour. Mostly because I don’t fully understand it myself.

But here’s what I know.

At the second bell, six Ministry guards outside the women’s dormitory received a gift. A large jar of plum wine, very strong, from "the merchant guild, with compliments, for your long journey." They were told it would be rude to refuse. They did not refuse.

At the third bell, Instructor Cha walked her usual patrol route around the dormitory. Slow. Even. Measured. Except tonight she stopped outside the guards’ post and spent an extremely long time lecturing them about the proper way to hold a sword while sitting. They were too drunk and too scared to leave.

At the same time, a laundry woman — paid one copper, I’m told — knocked on the back door of the dormitory and asked for Yun Seo-ah by name, to return some washing.

And at the fourth bell, in the guest pavilion across the academy, Headmistress Hwang Yu-seon placed her forty-third stone on the go board. Very, very slowly.

I was waiting at the top of the bell tower.

I heard her on the spiral stairs before I saw her. Bare feet. Running.

She came up through the trapdoor in a plain gray traveling robe, hair down, blue ribbon tied around her wrist. Out of breath. Eyes huge.

She stopped when she saw me.

For a second neither of us said anything.

Then she ran across the platform and threw herself at me so hard we both hit the bronze bell.

It went BONNNNG.

We froze.

Below us, across the whole sleeping academy, nothing happened. No lights. No shouts. Just the bell humming softly over our heads like it was laughing.

Seo-ah pressed her face into my chest and started shaking. I thought she was crying.

She was laughing.

"Every time," she gasped. "Every time we come up here, we hit that stupid bell."

We sat on the ledge. Same place as before. Legs hanging over the drop. The city spread out under the moon. The river silver. The Gwak compound. The sagging roof of the Blue Willow Inn with a big new hole in it.

"Is that the hole?" she asked. "From the roof thing? The laundry women told me."

"That’s the hole."

"You threw a stool through the ceiling."

"It was a very good stool."

She laughed again. Then she stopped laughing and leaned her head on my shoulder.

"My father read all my letters," she said quietly. "Of course he did. I should’ve known. I wrote about you in every single one. I couldn’t stop." She swallowed. "He came early because of you. Because he could tell."

"I’m sorry."

"I’m not." She lifted her head and looked at me. "Mu-jin. I’m not sorry about anything."

She reached into her sleeve and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Unfolded it. Held it out.

Small, neat capital handwriting.

Things I have decided (second list):

1. I will not cry in front of my father.

2. I will not cry in front of Mu-jin.

3. I will see the sunrise from the bell tower.

4. I will not waste one minute.

5.

6.

Five and six were blank.

"I left room," she said. "For things I decide tonight."

I looked at the list. Then at her.

"Number two’s already broken," I said gently.

She touched her cheek. It was wet. She looked at her fingers like she was surprised.

"...That’s your fault," she whispered. "You made me lose focus."

"Then I’ll take responsibility."

She looked at me for a long moment.

Then she folded the list, tucked it back into her sleeve, and climbed into my lap. Right there on the ledge, four stories above Hangju, with the moon behind her and the bell still faintly humming.

"Number five," she said. "I decide what happens tonight. All of it. You don’t get to ask every time. You don’t get to be careful." Her hands came up and untied my robe. "I’m not glass, Mu-jin. I’m a capital disciple. I’ve been swinging a sword since I was six."

"Seo-ah—"

"That’s an order, guide."

No system. No window. No ping. No number.

Just her.

She pushed my robe off my shoulders and kissed me like she was trying to fit ten years into one night. And somewhere in it she pulled her own traveling robe off and threw it behind her, and it caught on the edge of the bronze bell and hung there like a flag, and neither of us noticed.

She wasn’t the trembling girl from the fire chamber anymore. Or the careful one from the bell tower. Or the nervous one with the crumpled list in her dorm room.

She was something else.

She pushed me back on the cold stone platform and climbed on top of me and looked down at me with her hair falling around both our faces, and she was in charge. Completely. Every move was hers. Every pace was hers. When I tried to slow down, she grabbed my wrists and pinned them over my head on the stone, exactly the way Ayla does, and I swear she’d learned it from watching me.

"No careful," she breathed. "Remember?"

I remembered.

And for one night, at the top of the bell tower, a Ministry daughter who’d spent her whole life with everything decided for her decided every single thing.

It was still dark when we finally lay still.

She was on my chest. Wrapped in my robe. Her own was still hanging off the bell. She had the list back out and was writing something on it with a stick of charcoal she’d brought in her sleeve, because of course she had.

"What are you writing?"

"Number six."

"What is it?"

She finished. Blew on the charcoal. Then she folded the paper very small, tied it with the blue ribbon from her wrist, and pressed it into my hand.

"Don’t read it until the carriage leaves," she said.

"Seo-ah."

"Promise me."

"...I promise."

The sky turned gray.

Then pink.

Number three. The sunrise. We watched it together from the ledge, her back against my chest, my arms around her, the whole city turning gold below us.

She didn’t cry.

I did. A little. She pretended not to notice.

Then the trapdoor in the floor creaked open, and an old monk’s bald head popped up through it. The dawn bell-ringer. Holding his mallet.

He looked at us. Wrapped in one robe. On the ledge.

He looked at the other robe. Hanging off his bell.

He looked at us again.

Then he very slowly lowered himself back down through the trapdoor and closed it.

From underneath, muffled: "...I’ll ring it in a quarter hour."

Seo-ah laughed so hard she cried after all.

The Vice Minister’s carriage left through the academy gate at sunrise.

Half the academy was there to see it off. The headmistress, looking extremely well rested for someone who’d supposedly played go all night. Instructor Cha, with dark circles under her eyes and six very hungover Ministry guards behind her. Tae-man. Gi-chul. A bunch of disciples who’d come just to see the capital girl leave.

Seo-ah came down the dormitory steps in a fresh traveling robe with her hair perfectly tied and her sword on her back. Calm. Composed. A Ministry daughter.

She walked straight past me to the carriage.

Stopped at the door.

Turned around. Bowed to the headmistress. Bowed to Instructor Cha. Then turned to me and bowed. Perfectly formal. Perfectly correct.

"Thank you, guide," she said. Loud and clear, for everyone to hear. "For showing me Hangju."

"You’re welcome," I said. My voice cracked in the middle.

Nobody noticed except her.

She climbed in. The door shut. The carriage rolled out through the gate and down the road toward the river and the capital, and I stood there and watched it until it was gone.

Then I opened my hand.

Untied the blue ribbon. Unfolded the tiny piece of paper.

One line. Charcoal. Her neat capital handwriting, a little smudged.

6. Come find me when you’re strong enough. I’ll wait.

I stood in the academy courtyard holding a blue ribbon and a piece of paper and didn’t move for a long time.

Tae-man came and stood next to me. He didn’t say anything. He just put a meat bun in my other hand.

I was still standing there when a heavy hand landed on my shoulder from behind.

Not Tae-man’s. Too big. Too heavy. A merchant’s hand, with a thick gold ring.

"Young fool," said a deep, cheerful voice right behind my ear.

I went cold.

I knew that voice. I’d heard it through a talisman. I’d heard it through a wardrobe door.

Ayla’s husband.

"Walk with me," he said pleasantly, and his fingers dug into my shoulder like iron. "We need to talk. About my wife."