Restaurant, Gu Won
636 BCE, January 1st
**Morning.** Even the sun didn't shine. The sky was covered, a flat, colorless grey stretching from one end of the horizon to the other, the kind of morning that seemed to drain warmth from everything it touched.
This restaurant was known for its women's services: singing, dancing, comfort for the customers, painted sleeves catching the lamplight as the women moved between low tables, laughter rising and falling in practiced, musical waves. Expensive wooden tables and chairs sat atop red traditional carpets, their fibers plush enough to swallow footsteps entirely, the wood polished to a deep, warm shine that reflected the glow of dozens of hanging lanterns. Screens of carved sandalwood separated the finer alcoves, reserved for VIP customers, from the rest of the hall. There were dozens of people that morning, twenty VIPs in total. In the front sat a middle-aged man, fat, with a black beard along his jawline, hunched over his cup, his shoulders rounded in a posture that suggested a lifetime of being overlooked.
A young girl, looking almost like an adult, approached him, her steps small and deliberate against the carpet. She wore a worker's dress, simple cotton dyed pale blue, sleeves cinched at the wrist, and carried expensive alcohol, the bottle's surface cool and slightly damp with condensation. She stopped in front of him and reached for his cup. "Handsome man, can I serve this alcohol?"
The middle-aged man froze at being called handsome, despite knowing full well he wasn't, his eyes widening with a flicker of disbelief before something warmer, more hopeful, crept in behind it.
He was, in fact, the founder of Lawati Shop, though he'd come here only to eat, and to complain a little about his family's business, which owned the shop. The visit had meant nothing more, originally, than a quiet meal away from the noise of home.
He was a simple, lustful man. He fell easily for young girls, a weakness he was neither proud of nor particularly ashamed of anymore, simply resigned to it, the way one grows resigned to an old, familiar limp.
"Ye... yes..." he managed, his voice catching slightly.
The bottle slipped from her hand, striking the edge of the table with a sharp crack before rolling harmlessly onto the carpet. She went down with it, touching her forehead and collapsing onto his knees, her weight surprisingly light against him. His whole body began to tremble as he tried, and failed, to control himself, his hands hovering awkwardly, unsure where they were permitted to land. "Mi... miss, what happened to you?"
The girl's eyes were closed, lashes dark against pale skin. She opened them slowly and looked at him warmly, her gaze soft and unfocused, as though she were seeing him through some private, gentle haze. "Since my body has grown weak, handsome man, could you help me reach the medical house?"
He breathed heavily, his chest rising and falling in short, uneven bursts, then pulled her into his arms, one arm beneath her knees, the other bracing her back, and rose unsteadily to his feet. The strangers around them stayed absorbed in their own business, cups clinking, low laughter, the steady murmur of conversation, and no one noticed him come or go. With a face like his, no one ever paid him much attention, a fact that had shaped nearly every interaction he'd ever had in a room like this. Women usually found him distasteful to even look at, though tonight, for once, no one was looking at all.
He ran through the streets, his breath already ragged after only a few dozen steps, unused to that kind of exertion. It was still early enough that the streets sat empty, save for the occasional stray dog nosing through refuse near a shuttered stall. The girl gave him directions, left, right, her voice thin but steady against his ear, and he ran desperately, sandals slapping hard against packed dirt, sweat beading along his hairline despite the cool morning air. Her eyes stayed half-open as she pointed the way with a weak, trembling hand. Lust sat in his heart, but so did something closer to kindness, the two feelings tangled together in a way he didn't have the patience, in that moment, to untangle.
They finally reached the medical house, its wooden frame weathered grey, a faded sign hanging crooked above the door. Behind it stood a bamboo forest, stalks swaying gently despite the still, overcast air, and beside the house lay an herb farm, neat rows of green just visible in the dim morning light.
Without thinking, he rushed the door and kicked it open, the impact jarring up through his leg and into his hip.
Boom. A shockwave rattled a row of clay jars on a nearby shelf.
Huff. Huff. Huff.
He was so exhausted his legs trembled, threatening to give out beneath him entirely. Sweat dripped steadily from his chin onto the wooden floor.
He handed her over to the medical master at once, arms shaking with the sudden absence of her weight, then collapsed at the side of the room and breathed in relief, chest heaving, staring up at the exposed wooden beams of the ceiling.
The girl stayed unconscious, her chest rising and falling in slow, even breaths that betrayed nothing of what was actually happening behind her closed eyes.
The medical master studied the man for a moment, a faint smile crossing his face, quick, private, gone almost before it fully formed. Then he turned and stepped into the medical room, wiping down his medical robes with slow, deliberate motions.
He was Shree Yan, and the girl was Yi Ner.
Once the door had closed behind them, Yi Ner opened her eyes fully and sat up without difficulty, the earlier weakness vanishing entirely from her posture.
"Young master," she whispered, straightening her sleeves, "he really did bring me here from the restaurant."
Shree Yan said nothing. He crossed to the narrow gap in the door and pressed one eye close to the thin sliver of daylight, watching the man slumped outside.
The man had tried to stand twice already, as if to leave. Both times he'd lowered himself back down, some invisible tether apparently pulling him back to the floor each time.
Shree Yan's lips moved slightly. "Interesting."
Outside, the man pressed both hands against his face, elbows resting on bent knees.
I came here to complain about the Rana clan. What am I doing here. Why am I still sitting here. Fuck.
He stood, joints popping faintly from the awkward position he'd been holding, and turned toward the street, the grey morning light doing little to lift the mood pressing down on him. Then he stopped, one hand still braced against the doorframe, and didn't move for a long moment, some quiet, unresolved pull keeping his feet rooted to the spot.
He sat back down.
Five hours passed, the light outside shifting only slightly, the clouds never quite parting.
Yi Ner opened the door slowly, dressed again to look freshly woken, hair deliberately mussed, robe slightly askew, her face pale, deliberately so, faint shadows drawn beneath her eyes with careful, practiced skill.
The man was on his feet before the door had fully opened, nearly stumbling in his haste.
"You're awake," he said, his voice rough with disuse.
Yi Ner lowered her head. "You stayed?"
He looked away, toward the bamboo outside, its stalks still swaying faintly in some breeze he couldn't feel from where he stood. "I was just waiting. To make sure you were all right."
Her expression softened, something almost convincingly tender passing across her features. "No one's ever done something like that for me."
He said nothing, but the tension in his shoulders eased visibly, the strain of the last five hours draining out of him, and something else, quieter, tightened somewhere beneath his ribs.
Shree Yan stepped out in his medical robes and said, in a calm tone, "She's fine now. Just exhausted from working too much."
The man stepped forward and took Shree Yan's hand in both of his. "Thank you so much, medical master. Thank you." His eyes had gone warm, the way a man's eyes go warm when he's convinced himself he's done something good, something that, finally, for once, mattered.
Shree Yan looked between the two of them for a moment, letting the silence stretch slightly. "Forgive me," he said. "I assumed she was someone important to you."
"Why would you assume that?" the man asked, brow furrowing.
Shree Yan smiled faintly. "Because you carried her here as though losing her would be unbearable."
The man went still, the words landing somewhere he clearly hadn't expected.
"I..." He had no answer.
"Ah, well," Shree Yan said, letting the silence stretch a moment longer, watching the man's face carefully, "that's too bad. I assumed the two of you were together. You do look good side by side."
Yi Ner said nothing, keeping her eyes lowered, her expression settled somewhere between exhaustion and shyness, betraying nothing of what she and Shree Yan already knew, her hands folded neatly in front of her.
Shree Yan smiled. "You may go now. She's perfectly well."
She had used a technique called the Fake Face to appear as a grown woman, an illusion so seamless that even close inspection would reveal nothing but smooth, unremarkable skin, aged just enough to be believable. Shree Yan watched the two of them gather themselves to leave, an inward smile of his own hidden somewhere behind his composed expression.
They left the medical house together, stepping out into a morning that had brightened only slightly, the clouds thinning enough to let pale light through. As they walked down the street, Yi Ner blinked slowly against even that dim brightness. Passersby cast jealous glances at the young woman beside the middle-aged man, murmurs following them past market stalls just beginning to open for the day.
"Wha... what's your name?" Yi Ner asked.
His expression stayed plain and unremarkable as he answered, though something in his chest had quietly begun to unknot. "Yun Je. You can call me Je."
She softened her voice. "Je..."
"Hmm?"
"Thank you. Thank you so much for helping me today. Even though we're strangers, you still..." Tears rose in her eyes, bright and seemingly genuine, and she touched his shoulder. He pulled her in, holding her against him, one hand coming up instinctively to rest against her hair.
What is happening to me.
He didn't understand it. He'd known this woman for less than a day, and already something in his chest refused to sit still, some unfamiliar warmth spreading slowly outward from wherever her tears had landed.
Is this what falling in love feels like? Is this the thing I've spent my whole life missing?
He held her a moment longer than he needed to, the noise of the street fading into something distant and unimportant around them, and told himself it was only kindness.