Chapter 35: Rain

It started raining around the second bell.

Not a little rain. Real rain. The kind that comes down the river in a gray wall and turns the whole dock district into mud. Thunder rolling off the hills. Lightning turning everything white for half a second.

And it came straight through the hole in my ceiling.

I’d stuck a rice-straw mat over it the day after the roof thing. The mat lasted about four breaths. Then water started pouring through like someone was emptying a bucket on my bed, and I gave up, grabbed my blanket, and went out on the walkway.

That’s where I found her.

The walkway on the top floor of the east wing has a long open section at the end, past my door, past Ayla’s. Just a railing and a roof overhang and the whole storm out in front of you.

Hong Seo-rin was standing at the railing.

No abacus.

That was the first thing I noticed. I’d never seen her without it. Not once. Not even in bed. She’d made me hang it out the window just so she could stop touching it.

Now her hands were just hanging at her sides. Empty.

She was wearing a thin white sleeping shift. Short. Sleeveless. Plain cotton. The overhang wasn’t doing much. The rain was blowing in sideways and she was soaked through, the cotton stuck to her like a second skin. Her hair was down and dripping. Barefoot on the wet boards.

She was staring out at the storm like she was trying to count the raindrops.

And she couldn’t.

"Seo-rin?"

She didn’t turn around.

"Go back inside, Mu-jin."

"There’s a lake on my bed."

She didn’t laugh. Didn’t make that little dry noise.

I walked over. Stood next to her at the railing. Rain hit my face.

Her eyes were red.

"Seo-rin. What’s wrong?"

"Nothing’s wrong." Her voice was perfectly flat. "I’m calculating."

"Calculating what?"

"How I got it wrong."

She was quiet for a long time. Then she said it to the rain, not to me.

"I came here when I was nineteen. My father wanted me to marry his business partner. A man who owed him money. I’d been counting for my father since I was nine, and I looked at that man’s books, and I knew he’d be bankrupt in two years." She laughed. It came out wrong. "I was right. Two years and three months. But I’d already run away by then."

Lightning. The whole river went white.

"I had nothing. No family. No money. Just this." She held up her empty hands like the abacus was still in them. "The owner of this dump gave me a room for free in exchange for doing his books. That was eleven years ago. I’ve been here ever since."

She swallowed.

"Four years ago, the owner took that loan from the Merchant Bank. Six hundred silver. He drank half of it. Lost the other half at dice. He never paid back a single coin." Her voice cracked, just a little. "So I paid the interest. Every month. From my own wages. Four years. I never told anyone. I just... kept the bank from noticing us."

I stared at her.

"Every month?"

"Twelve silver a month. Forty-eight months." She didn’t even have to think about it. "Five hundred and seventy-six silver." She closed her eyes. "Almost the whole debt. In interest. And the debt didn’t move one copper. Because that’s how interest works. I know that. I’ve always known that. I’m the one who explains arithmetic to pigs."

She opened her eyes.

"And I did it anyway. Because it was the only home I ever had. And now Gu Seung-hwan bought it with one payment. In one morning." She looked at me, and her face just... broke. "Eleven years, Mu-jin. And I counted wrong."

Then she was crying.

Hong Seo-rin. The coldest, calmest, most dangerous woman in the Blue Willow Inn. Crying so hard her whole body shook, in the rain, with no abacus to hold onto.

I didn’t think. I just grabbed her and pulled her in.

She hit my chest like she’d been shoved. Her fists were clenched in my robe. Her face was pressed into my neck. She was freezing — her skin ice cold from the rain, that soaked cotton shift plastered against me so I could feel every shiver, every curve, everything.

I wrapped my blanket around both of us. Held on.

"You didn’t count wrong," I said into her wet hair.

"I did."

"You kept everybody here for four years. Yeon-hee’s clinic. Ayla’s room. The academy girls. Me." I held her tighter. "Four years of everyone having a home. That’s not counting wrong. That’s the only thing anyone in this building ever counted right."

She made a sound against my neck. Half sob, half laugh.

"That’s terrible math," she said.

"I’m Third-rate. I’m bad at everything."

She laughed for real that time. Wet and shaky.

Then she lifted her head and looked at me. Rain on her lashes. Lips trembling from cold.

"Don’t let me count tonight," she whispered.

I kissed her.

The laundry roof was right above the walkway. A flat section of the inn’s roof where the washerwomen hang sheets to dry. A ladder ran up to it from the end of the walkway.

She climbed it first. I followed. I don’t know why. Neither of us said anything. It just felt right to be out in it instead of hiding from it.

There were sheets still up there. Forgotten. A whole row of them, hanging on long bamboo poles, soaked and heavy and snapping in the wind like flags.

And in the middle of them, Seo-rin turned around and pulled her shift up over her head and threw it into the storm.

The wind took it. It flew off over the edge of the roof and disappeared.

She stood there in the rain with nothing on. Arms out. Face up to the sky. Water pouring down her body.

Lightning lit her up white.

God.

She wasn’t the woman in the red underrobe in her perfect room. She wasn’t the cool businesswoman at the Black Boar. She was something wild that had been locked inside that other woman for eleven years.

She turned and looked at me.

"Well?" she said. "What are you waiting for?"

My robe went over the edge too.

She met me halfway. Cold skin. Hot mouth. Rain running between us. She kissed me like she was angry, then like she was drowning, then like she’d never kissed anyone before, all in the space of three breaths. Her hands were everywhere. So were mine. She was shaking. I couldn’t tell anymore if it was the cold or the crying or something else.

The sheets snapped around us. One wrapped itself around both of us, wet and heavy, like the storm was trying to tie us together.

We went down on the flat roof tiles. Rain hammering on my back. Her hands on my face. Her eyes wide open, looking straight up at me through the downpour.

"Mu-jin," she said. "Mu-jin. Mu-jin." Over and over. Like she was counting it. Like it was the only number she wanted to know.

And then she stopped saying anything at all.

[Harmony: Hong Seo-rin.]

[Dormancy ending...]

[Harmony reawakened.]

The coal in my belly — the one that had been cold and dead for seven days — flickered.

Just a flicker. A spark. One thread of cold coins sliding back into place, clicking quietly, the way her beads click.

Not a flood. Not a surge. Just... back.

I almost laughed. Of course it was her. Of course the first one to come back would be the one who counted everything, finally not counting.

I didn’t stop.

Neither did she.

Thunder rolled across the river like applause.

We lay on the wet roof tiles afterward wrapped in somebody’s soaked bedsheet, staring up at the clouds as the rain finally started to slow down.

She was on my chest. Calm. Breathing slow.

"The washerwomen," I said, "are going to find our robes in the alley tomorrow."

"I’ll pay them a copper each."

"There’s only one robe each."

"Then two coppers." She was quiet for a while. Then: "Mu-jin. Kang Dal-ho bet two hundred silver on you. At fifty to one."

"I know."

"If you win, he gets ten thousand."

"I know."

She lifted her head. Her eyes were still red. But something had come back into them. Something sharp. Something calculating.

"The bookmakers in the dock district are still taking bets," she said slowly. "Fifty to one. Everyone thinks you’ll die. Nobody’s betting on you except one merchant who trusts his wife." She was talking faster now. "I have thirty silver saved. Yeon-hee probably has twenty. Ayla’s husband gives her an allowance. Madam Gwak could put in a thousand without blinking. The academy girls. The laundry women—"

"Seo-rin."

"Twelve silver on you at fifty to one is six hundred." Her finger tapped my chest. Tap, tap. Like beads. "Twelve silver. That’s all we need, Mu-jin. Twelve silver, and if you win, the inn is paid off the same day."

I looked at her.

She looked at me.

"If I win," I said.

"If you win."

"And if I lose?"

"Then you’re dead," she said simply, "and you won’t have to worry about it."

I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. Lying naked on a wet roof in the rain, laughing so hard my ribs hurt, and Seo-rin on top of me laughing too, really laughing, the first time I’d ever heard her do it without stopping herself.

When we finally stopped, she put her head back on my chest.

"Mu-jin."

"Mm."

"Don’t die."

"Everybody keeps saying that."

"Because everybody means it."

The next morning I woke up in Ayla’s bed, because mine was a swamp and Kang Dal-ho had ridden back to his caravan at the river crossing right after dinner. Term one technically didn’t apply.

I woke up because somebody was pounding on the front gate of the inn.

Not knocking. Pounding. With something metal. Like the butt of a spear.

Ayla was already at the window. Sword in hand. She looked down into the courtyard and her whole body went stiff.

"Mu-jin," she said. "Come."

I went to the window.

The courtyard was full of soldiers.

Not Gu Clan guards. Not dock thugs. Real soldiers. Eight of them. Matching gray armor. Spears. Standing in two neat lines in the mud like they’d been carved there.

And standing in front of them, by the well, was a woman.

Tall. Strong. Mid-thirties. Short black hair cut blunt at the jaw. Gray lacquered armor over a dark red uniform, belted tight around a waist that the armor did absolutely nothing to hide. A long straight sword on her hip. A face like a closed gate.

She was holding a rolled-up scroll with a red seal.

She unrolled it. Read in a loud, flat, carrying voice that woke up anyone in the building who was still asleep.

"By order of the holder of this property’s debt, Elder Gu Seung-hwan of the Gu Clan, the Blue Willow Inn is placed under stewardship until the debt is settled or the property is seized. All lodgers will remain in their rooms during inspections. All visitors will be logged. All rents will be paid to the steward directly."

She rolled up the scroll.

"I am the steward," she said. "Captain Jin Ha-seul. Formerly of the Hangju garrison."

Then she looked up.

Straight at our window.

Straight at me.

[Target Detected.]

She didn’t blink.

"Baek Mu-jin," said Captain Jin. "Elder Gu sends his regards." She put her hand on the hilt of her sword. "He asked me to make sure you’re alive and in perfect health for your duel."

A pause.

"And that nothing else in this building happens without my knowing about it."