**[Restaurant — Gu Won]**
**[636 BCE, Jan 1]**
**[TIME: 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 is known for women's services. Women serve the customers, dance, singing, and comfort for the customers, their painted sleeves catching the lamplight as they moved between low tables, laughter rising and falling in practiced, musical waves. There are expensive wooden tables, chairs, and 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. These are specially decorated for VIP customers, screens of carved sandalwood separating the finer alcoves from the rest of the hall. There are dozens of people. Twenty VIPs in total. In the front, a middle-aged man, fat, with a black beard along his jawline, sat hunched over his cup, shoulders rounded in a posture that suggested a lifetime of being overlooked.
A young girl, looking almost like an adult, was coming toward the fat man, her steps small and deliberate against the carpet. She wore a worker's dress, simple cotton dyed pale blue, sleeves cinched at the wrist. She held alcohol — expensive alcohol, the bottle's surface cool and slightly damp with condensation. She stood in front of him. She reached her hand toward his cup. She asked him, "Handsome man, can I serve this alcohol?" The middle-aged man was stunned after hearing himself called "a handsome man," even though he was an ugly man, his eyes widening with a flicker of disbelief before something warmer, more hopeful, crept in behind it.
Actually, he was the founder of Lawati Shop. He came here just to eat. He also came to complain about his family's shop — Lawati Shop belonged to his family — the whole visit meant, originally, as nothing more than a quiet meal away from the noise of home.
He was a simple, lustful person. 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.
He replied nervously, voice catching slightly. "Ye... yes..."
The alcohol slipped from her hand, the bottle striking the edge of the table with a sharp crack before rolling harmlessly onto the carpet. She fell down as well, touching her forehead, collapsing onto his knees, her weight surprisingly light against him. The middle-aged man's whole body started trembling as he tried to control himself, but he couldn't, his hands hovering awkwardly, unsure where they were permitted to land. He asked, "Mi... miss, what happened to you?"
The young girl's eyes were closed, lashes dark against pale skin. She slowly opened them and looked at the middle-aged man warmly, her gaze soft and unfocused, as though she were seeing him through some private, gentle haze. "Since my body has become weak, handsome man, can you help me reach the medical house?"
The middle-aged man breathed heavily, chest rising and falling in short, uneven bursts. Then he pulled her into his arms, one arm beneath her knees, the other bracing her back, and rose unsteadily to his feet. All the strangers around them were still focused on their own business — cups clinking, low laughter, the steady murmur of conversation — they didn't even notice the middle-aged man come and leave. With his ugly face, no one paid him any attention, a fact that had shaped nearly every interaction he'd ever had in a room like this. The girls felt disgusted just to look at him, though tonight, for once, no one was looking at all.
The middle-aged man ran through the street, his breath already ragged after only a few dozen steps, unaccustomed to this kind of exertion. It was so early in the morning that people weren't out yet, the streets empty save for the occasional stray dog nosing through refuse near a shuttered stall. The young girl was giving him directions — left, right — her voice thin but steady against his ear. He ran desperately, sandals slapping hard against packed dirt, sweat already beading along his hairline despite the cool morning air. The young girl's eyes were half-open. She gave directions with her right hand, and that hand, weak as it seemed, could barely move, fingers trembling faintly with each gesture. He had lust in his heart, but kindness within it too, the two feelings tangled together in a way he didn't have the patience, in that moment, to untangle.
Finally they arrived in front of the medical house, its wooden frame weathered grey, a faded sign hanging crooked above the door. Behind the house there was a bamboo forest, stalks swaying gently despite the still, overcast air, and at the center of the medical house stood an herb farm, neat rows of green just visible in the dim morning light.
Without thinking, he rushed to the door and kicked it open, the impact jarring up through his leg and into his hip.
Boom! A shockwave echoed through the house, rattling a row of clay jars on a nearby shelf.
Huff... huff... huff...
He was so exhausted his legs trembled, threatening to give out entirely beneath him. Sweat covered his face, dripping steadily from his chin onto the wooden floor.
He immediately handed her over to the medical master, arms shaking with the sudden absence of her weight. Then he lay down at the side and breathed in relief, chest heaving, staring up at the exposed wooden beams of the ceiling.
The girl was still 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 stared at the middle-aged man, and a faint smile appeared on his face — quick, private, gone almost before it fully formed. He turned and stepped inside the medical room, wiping down his medical outfit with slow, deliberate motions.
He was Shree Yan, and the girl was Yi Ner.
Once the door 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 moved to the narrow gap in the door and looked through it, at the man slumped outside, one eye pressed close to the thin sliver of daylight.
The man had tried to sit up twice, as if to leave. Both times, he had 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. He turned toward the street, the grey morning light doing little to improve the mood pressing down on him. Then he stopped, one hand still braced against the doorframe, and did not 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, now dressed again in the appearance of someone freshly woken, hair deliberately mussed, robe slightly askew. She looked pale, deliberately so, the faint shadows beneath her eyes drawn on 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, 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 fine."
Her expression softened, something almost convincingly tender passing across her features. "No one has ever done something like that for me."
The man said nothing. But something in his shoulders eased, the tension of the past five hours draining visibly from his frame, and something else, quieter, tightened somewhere beneath his ribs.
Shree Yan came out in his medical outfit and said, in a calm tone, "She's fine now, she was just exhausted from working too much."
The man stepped forward and grabbed Shree Yan's hand, gripping it with both of his own. "Thank you so much, medical master. Thank you." His eyes were warm, the way a man's eyes go warm when he has convinced himself he has done something good, something that finally, for once, mattered.
Shree Yan looked between the two of them for a moment, letting the silence stretch just 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.
"Uh," Shree Yan said, letting the silence stretch a moment longer before he broke it himself, watching the man's face carefully, "that's too bad. I thought the two of you were in a relationship — you look so good together."
Yi Ner said nothing. She kept her eyes lowered, her expression 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 can leave with her now. Everything is good now."
She had used the technique to appear as an adult woman. This technique was called the Fake Face, the illusion so seamless that even close inspection would reveal nothing but smooth, unremarkable skin, aged just enough to be believable. Shree Yan smiled, inwardly, watching the two of them gather themselves to leave.
They left the medical house, stepping out into a morning that had brightened only slightly, the clouds thinning enough to let pale light through. Walking down the street, Yi Ner slowly opened her eyes fully, blinking against even that dim brightness. Everyone on the street looked at the young woman beside the middle-aged man with jealousy, murmurs following them past market stalls just beginning to open for the day.
Yi Ner asked him, "Wha— what is your name?"
His expression stayed plain and unremarkable as he replied, though something in his chest had begun, quietly, to unknot. "Yun Je. You can call me Je."
Yi Ner softened her voice. "Je..."
"Hmm?"
"Thank you. Thank you so much for your help today. Even though we're strangers, you helped me..." Tears rose in her eyes, genuine-seeming and bright, and touched Je's shoulder as he pulled her in, holding her against his back, one hand coming up instinctively to rest against her hair.
*What is happening to me.*
He didn't understand it. He had 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 street noise fading into something distant and unimportant around them, and told himself it was only kindness.