Chapter 13 : Bongyang Inn

Chapter 13: Bongyang Inn

Bongyang Inn.

While Jangho and the gang of hooligans were dying off, Gi Dae-hyo and Gi Man-ji were investigating a second-floor room of the Bongyang Inn, presumed to be the place where the Suicide Plague had first occurred. Following behind them, the inn’s owner, the Noh Family, also came inside.

“Is it this room?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You were the one who found them?”

“Yes. In this room, I was the first to discover Machil and Choseon hanging by their necks from that beam over there, dead.”

The innkeeper bowed so deeply that his head nearly touched the ground as he answered Gi Dae-hyo’s questions.

“Hm.”

Gi Dae-hyo, operating under the assumption that the two deaths were homicides rather than suicides, began to examine every corner of the room.

It was a typical inn room with nothing particularly noteworthy. If there was anything unusual, it might have been the lurid bedspread dyed a deep crimson, but for Gi Dae-hyo, who was well aware of the nature of the Bongyang Inn’s business, it did not seem especially strange or remarkable.

The first thing he checked was whether there was a window. If there was one, an assassin might have entered through it.

However, no matter where he looked, front, back, left, right, up, or down, there was no window anywhere in the room. In an ordinary residence, a window was usually set into the wall opposite the entrance. But the corresponding wall in this room was simply a wall, nothing more.

At a glance, the possibility of something entering from that side was eliminated.

‘Then did they come in through the door?’

Creak.

Gi Dae-hyo reopened the door he had closed and examined the inn's structure. The Bongyang Inn was a typical two-story building: The first floor was an open structure with rooms and facilities arranged around a central open space, allowing clear lines of sight across the entire floor. The second floor consisted of a long main corridor with branching hallways, with a staircase positioned near the center and guest rooms lined up along both sides.

There was a staircase at the center of the corridor, and rooms were lined up along both sides. From the second-floor corridor, one could clearly see the interior of the first floor below. Likewise, from the first floor, anyone moving along the second-floor corridor would have been plainly visible.

As a result, the possibility of an intruder entering through the door also disappeared. If the culprit had come in through the door, there would have been a witness, whether an inn attendant or a guest.

The possibilities of intrusion from the front and back were gone.

Next, the possibility from the right vanished just as easily.

The room was located at the far end of the main corridor, in the corner where the hallway terminated. The wall on the right side of the room faced the outside. Without tearing down the wall itself, there was absolutely no way to enter from that direction.

Next came up and down. But intrusion from above or below was also impossible.

Above was the roof.

Unless the entire roof had been removed, there was no way to come in from there.

Below was the floor.

Likewise, infiltration would only have been possible if the entire floor had been torn up. Both the roof and the floor were framed with wood and stone and finished with packed mud. It was a structure through which not even a single drop of water could easily seep. This possibility was also eliminated in an instant.

According to the inn owner, after Machil and Choseon had died, no guests had ever been let into the room, nor had any repairs been made. With that, the possibilities of intrusion from the front, back, right, above, and below were completely erased.

The only remaining possibility was the left wall. If the Suicide Plague was truly a murder case, then the culprit would have entered this room through the left wall.

With his hands clasped behind his back, Gi Dae-hyo approached the left wall. A stylish leopard-patterned cloth hung down like a curtain, trailing long toward the floor. It was thick and carefully layered for soundproofing, but cloth was still cloth.

Shak.

With a single sweep of Gi Dae-hyo’s hand, the cloth vanished, revealing a wall surface arranged neatly in the form of the character 川.

“Hm.”

Seeing that, he became convinced that his reasoning had been correct. Unlike the other walls, this one was structured so that if only the wood were removed, passage would be freely possible.

The problem was...

There was no sign that this wood had ever been removed.

“Take a look at this.”

“Yes, sir.”

At Gi Dae-hyo’s call, the inn owner of the Noh Family hurried over and replied.

“Is there any way to pull out these logs without removing the roof?”

“No, of course not, sir. These logs are fitted into grooves cut into the ceiling beams and the floor beams. Unless all the beams are removed, there’s absolutely no way to pull them out.”

Gi Dae-hyo already knew this, but he had asked again for the sake of confirmation.

Once more, he carefully examined the wall surface. Between the cylindrical logs, it looked difficult for even a single sheet of paper to slip through. He could not find any trace whatsoever of the wood having been removed.

‘If that’s the case... does that mean the series of suicides happening recently is truly entirely due to a plague?’

The thought crossed his mind for a moment, but Gi Dae-hyo soon shook his head.

Did that make any sense? What kind of plague in the world drove people to commit suicide?

Even if such a thing did exist, a plague, by its very nature, should spread gradually outward from a central area. Yet the victims of the Suicide Plague were appearing irregularly throughout Bongyang.

That meant it spread selectively among people, and he had never heard of nor seen such a plague. It was sheer nonsense.

The conclusion was that it was not a plague.

Putting his weight back on the possibility of homicide, Gi Dae-hyo examined the logs again.

If there were someone who had mastered the Shrinking Bone Art to the extreme, wouldn’t it be possible to pass through this gap? He had never seen or heard of such a master, but he thought it could be possible. After all, the martial world was full of unimaginable eccentrics and bizarre phenomena.

Compared to the front, back, right, above, and below areas so tightly sealed that even water could not pass through, this side seemed far more plausible.

At the very least, wouldn’t water be able to pass between these processed logs? If someone could make their body flow and deform like water, it would be entirely possible to infiltrate the room through here.

Between something utterly impossible and something that held even a sliver of possibility, Gi Dae-hyo’s reasoning naturally leaned in that direction.

“When Machil died, was there someone staying in the room next door? Or was it empty?”

Gi Dae-hyo asked while already expecting it to have been vacant. If it had been empty, the culprit could have entered that room first and then, somehow, passed through the wall into this one.

However, his prediction was immediately proven wrong.

“No, sir. There was a guest in that room as well. He probably arrived at the Bongyang Inn around the same time as Machil.”

“...And who was that?”

Gi Dae-hyo continued questioning the innkeeper without showing disappointment.

“It was Sosam of the Danri Family.”

The reason the innkeeper specified Sosam of the Danri Family was simple: there were far too many people named Sosam. If he had just said Sosam, there would have been dozens, even within Bongyang alone.

But when one said Sosam of the Danri Family, it could only mean the mute Ma-a-sam.

“Sosam of the Danri Family? Who is that? Was there someone with that name in the family?”

Gi Dae-hyo did not know who Sosam was. Even if Sosam was fairly well-known in Bongyang, the gap in their social standing was far too great. In fact, it would have been stranger if Gi Dae-hyo did know him.

That was why he directed the question to Gi Man-ji.

“Father, he is one of the family’s horse stable hirelings.”

“A horse stable hireling? Why would someone like that come here at that hour?”

“Probably for the same reason as Machil.”

The same reason as Machil?

Ah. Lust.

Gi Dae-hyo’s gaze immediately shifted to the innkeeper. The man nodded at once in confirmation.

“Yes, sir. While Machil was holding Choseon, Sosam was holding Aeng-aeng.”

“I see. Then go and bring that girl, Aeng-aeng, here.”

Before the innkeeper could even finish replying, he had already gone and returned with Aeng-aeng.

Aeng-aeng had been in the middle of entertaining a customer and was dragged over without understanding what was going on. As she hurriedly straightened her disheveled clothes, Gi Dae-hyo began his questioning.

“On the day Machil and Choseon died, were you in the room next door with someone called Sosam?”

“Yes.”

“What were you doing?”

Aeng-aeng let out a hollow laugh, as if the question were absurd.

“Heeheehee. What do you think a courtesan girl and a young man would be doing in a place like this? Obviously, we were fu—”

“Aeng-aeng! Watch your mouth!”

The innkeeper hurriedly cut her off.

“...Obviously, we were sleeping.”

“Was that all? Did you see anything enter or pass through the wall between your room and the one where Machil and Choseon were?”

“Hard to say... I was busy with Sosam and, uh... taking care of business, so I didn’t really pay attention to anything else.”

“Ahem.”

Noh cleared his throat again as a warning. Gi Dae-hyo raised a hand to stop him.

“It’s fine. Then was there anything else out of the ordinary?”

“No. Nothing unusual at all. Just like always... Ah, well, there was one thing. Sosam said he was hungry and asked for some food. Usually, the men who come here take care of their business first and eat afterward, but since it was Sosam’s first time, maybe he was nervous. He ate first, and only then did we… You know.”

“Hm.”

After hearing Aeng-aeng’s words, Gi Dae-hyo stroked his beard. It was a habit he had whenever he fell into deep thought.

No matter how much he thought about it, however, the order of eating and bedding down did not seem particularly important, though it did leave a faint sense of unease.

He continued questioning Aeng-aeng about various details, but as before, nothing especially noteworthy emerged.

“Thank you for your cooperation. Man-ji, let’s go.”

“Yes, Father. Where will you head next?”

“To the site where the next Suicide Plague incident occurred.”

The two of them activated their lightness skill and vanished from the Bongyang Inn in an instant.

Watching them leave, Noh shook his head and went back down to the first floor. After glancing at his retreating, Aeng-aeng suddenly tossed out a remark, as if something had just occurred to her.

“Now that I think about it, there was one more unusual thing. That Sosam guy’s stamina was unbelievable. Ahh—. I’ve never seen bedchamber skills like that in my entire life. Is there really no other man like Sosam? If it were a man like that, I’d be ready to devote myself completely, even if he were a mute idiot.”

Smacking her lips in regret, Aeng-aeng returned to entertaining customers. Perhaps because she was recalling what had happened with Sosam, her body was already burning hot. Whoever her client was tonight, he was bound to experience true bliss.

Before long, the Bongyang Inn returned to what it had always been, a place where men’s filthy desires writhed and festered.