LTIS Ch 3

Thump.

A large chunk of ice drifted and bumped against something.

Dancho deftly pushed the ice away with her laundry bat and resumed pounding the clothes.

Buni’s chatter continued amidst the gurgling stream.

“So, a total scoundrel.”

“…….”

“Twelve a day. He plays with twelve new women every single day, so his nickname among the courtesans is the Twelve Zodiac Animals.”

Buni’s laundry bat paused mid-air. Instead, it gestured emphatically in the air, punctuating her story.

“He assigns each woman an animal from the zodiac – you’re a cow, you’re a snake, you’re a monkey – and makes them imitate the animal while he… you know. Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake… Horse, Sheep?!”

“Oh, Sheep.”

“Yeah, that. How can someone sleep with twelve women every single day?! Does he even have the stamina?! Is he human or beast?”

“He must be vigorous.”

Dancho replied nonchalantly, flipping Buni’s laundry. Buni listlessly pounded the flipped laundry, continuing her torrent of words.

“Anyway, they say he won’t eat, sleep, or even pee if there isn’t a woman by his side. Wherever he goes, whatever he does, he always has a woman next to him.”

“…….”

“And his temper is so fickle. He’ll yell that the food is pig slop today, even if he praised it yesterday, and throw the entire bowl. Yesterday it was too salty, today it’s bland, tomorrow it’ll be too sweet. It’s impossible to please him. And that’s not all?”

Dancho took the bat from Buni’s hand and handed her the finished laundry. Buni, grinning, rinsed it carelessly while continuing her story.

She had apparently been to town for a short while, and in that time, she had picked up enough gossip to fill a mountain. Since unraveling her bag of stories was Buni’s pleasure, Dancho listened quietly.

“He burned down someone’s perfectly good house because he didn’t like the scenery, splashed water on a troupe of performers, stuffed horse dung into a crying baby’s mouth, and kicked an old man’s backside for getting in his way. And that old man was a nobleman, too.”

“…….”

“He lifts women’s skirts in the streets, pushed a servant girl into a cesspit and gave her dung poisoning, and before that, he set fire to another servant’s hair and buttocks. His grandfather is a wealthy landowner and a village elder, and he’s completely arrogant, relying on that power.”

Buni’s wet trousers were flung into the air with a splash.

“In short, he’s a true, top-to-bottom, insane, good-for-nothing scoundrel.”

“…….”

Having said that, Buni raised her eyebrows. She glared at Dancho, who was sitting there as lifelessly as her own laundry bat moments before.

“Are you even listening?”

Dancho, startled, shrugged her shoulders and replied with feigned composure.

“Yeah. I’m listening. To the… scoundrel.”

Only then did Buni seem satisfied and continued speaking. She smacked her lips as if this was the real story.

“After all that insane behavior, he finally got caught. The person he harassed in the marketplace happened to be the Princess who was out for a stroll. He pulled her hair and even took off her ornamental hairpin. He pulled the hair of a Princess, no less.”

“Oh my…”

“No matter how powerful a rural family is, they can’t beat the royal palace. Who’s backing the Princess? The Crown Prince himself and Lord Yeon Hwagun. He was beaten to a pulp by the royal guards, dragged to the government office, and caned mercilessly. His family elders called all the renowned physicians in the eight provinces and barely managed to save his life.”

“Hmm…”

“They were looking for a place to send him to recuperate until things quieted down, and Old Man Bang, the physician, readily accepted. They say it’s recuperation, but it’s just an excuse. His family figured a month stuck in the mountains would knock some sense into him. They know. If they let him run loose again, he’ll ruin the family. So, he’s been exiled, not officially, but practically, to this mountain village.”

“Oh…”

Although she was responding, Dancho was mostly tuning out Buni’s words. Her mind was preoccupied with her younger sibling, whom she had been separated from as a child.

She had heard news of her sibling, whom she had desperately searched for over the years. According to Mr. Joongdu, it was almost certain this time.

She had sent a letter with Mr. Joongdu, so she should be receiving a reply soon. The thought made her heart pound, she couldn’t eat, she couldn’t sleep, and she couldn’t focus on her work.

So no matter how passionately Buni spoke, her words hardly registered.

“……So!”

Slap. Buni slammed the wet jacket against a rock and widened her eyes.

“I really don’t understand why you’re taking on this job.”

Dancho’s reaction was a little dazed as she pulled herself out of her thoughts.

“……Huh?”

“Why would you serve such a terrible scoundrel? Old Man Bang, well, he was born with a money obsession, so that’s understandable, but why you? He’ll probably just brew some medicine and go off gallivanting, leaving you to do all the hard work. How much can you possibly earn to put up with such a jerk, let alone a crazy, insane one?”

That’s right. In the meantime, Dancho, her eyes widening, shoved the laundry basket into Buni’s arms. By the time Buni looked up, Dancho was already running away, her laundry bat in hand.

“Why all of a sudden, what, what’s going on?!”

Dancho, dashing out, replied without looking back.

“I have to go greet him!”

“Greet who?”

“The crazy, insane scoundrel you were talking about!”

Dancho waved her laundry bat in the air instead of her hand.

That was a rather cheerful response to such a statement.

Dumbfounded, Buni gaped, then shouted,

“Why the laundry bat?!”

Dancho’s retreating figure had already shrunk to the size of an ant. Buni raised her voice again.

“Thanks for helping with the laundry!”

The gurgling stream answered. Buni sniffed and wrung out the wet laundry.

“Honestly, Dancho’s got too much useless empathy…”

Old Man Bang must have put on his pitiful act. Otherwise, why would she take the job?

“She’s a fool, a fool. She doesn’t even realize she’s being exploited by that old man.”

She grumbled affectionately, picking up her pace. She wanted to finish her work quickly and get a look at the scoundrel’s face.

Then suddenly,

“Mr. Scoundrel, I hope you get lost on Spinning Ridge on your way here.”

Satisfied with her curse, Buni smirked. The laundry piled up neatly in the basket.

୧₊˚🍵🔖. ݁₊

Oh dear.

Looking up at the sky, Dancho clutched her skirt and quickened her pace. It looked like it was about to snow again.

“He had to choose a day like this to come.”

She was already sinking knee-deep with every step due to the snow that had accumulated overnight. If she didn’t hurry and bring the guest up, they would be trapped in the mountain by the impending snowfall. Freezing to death in this weather would only be a matter of time.

“What a fantastic day he picked to arrive.”

She gasped for breath. The mountain path was already treacherous, and with the thick snow, her progress was slow and the effort multiplied. Her nose was freezing, but sweat beaded on her forehead.

Fortunately, she had taken the shortcut, so she still had time before the appointed hour. But that didn’t mean she could slow down, so she continued walking without rest.

This was a promised job, she couldn’t let the guest freeze to death and ruin it.

“Haah. Hoo.”

She needed money to bring her sibling back. The ransom was a whopping one hundred nyang.

She had been saving diligently to find her sibling, but it was a far cry from the required amount. While she was fretting over how to acquire such a large sum, she received an offer from Physician Bang. He would give her fifty nyang if she took good care of the scoundrel for a month.

Dancho knew. If he was offering her fifty nyang, Physician Bang was probably pocketing at least five times that amount. The scoundrel’s reputation was notoriously bad, after all.

“I want one hundred nyang.”

“What? Do you even know how much one hundred nyang is? A thirteen-room tile-roofed house in Bukchon costs one hundred and fifty nyang.”

She had tried her luck, knowing that there was no one else who would do the job.

Most of the guests who came to recuperate in the mountain retreat were patients. There might be many who could serve as attendants, but it was nearly impossible to find a skilled worker like her who was also proficient in handling medicinal herbs and providing appropriate treatment.

“One hundred and twenty nyang.”

“This isn’t our first rodeo, Dancho. That’s too much…”

“One hundred and thirty nyang.”

“Dancho…”

“One hundred and forty nyang. I’m not going any higher, and I’m leaving.”

“Alright. One hundred nyang. Let’s settle on one hundred nyang.”

Dancho didn’t care how much Physician Bang pocketed. One hundred nyang was all that mattered.

She was unyielding when it came to her wages, but she also knew that the old man wouldn’t offer more even if she pushed for it.

Physician Bang, likewise, had no one else to entrust the job to, so it was a mutually agreeable compromise.

“And all expenses incurred for the guest, including food, are separate.”

“Why are you being so stingy? You were always tight-fisted, but lately, it’s even worse…”

“And fifty nyang upfront.”

So, for Dancho, the infamous scoundrel was a godsend. If she managed to take care of him and send him back safely, she would have the money to bring her sibling home.

“He’s not trying to climb up here on his own, is he?”

A sudden thought made her anxious. She had heard he was self-willed and impatient. He wasn’t the type to obediently wait if told to.

“I don’t care where he wanders, as long as he stays away from Spinning Ridge.”

On snowy Muwol Mountain, there was a place called Spinning Ridge. It was said that in winter, outsiders couldn’t distinguish the path and would just end up spinning around, hence the name.

Even locals didn’t take Spinning Ridge lightly. Even those who lived in nearby villages often got trapped in the mountain. People occasionally froze to death and were found as corpses only when spring arrived.

That is, if they weren’t eaten by the white tiger that was said to live on Spinning Ridge.

Because of this, Dancho sometimes earned money by guiding people on snowy days. It was a fairly lucrative job for her, as she knew the mountain like the back of her hand.

Thud.

A branch, unable to bear the weight, dropped a clump of snow. She dodged it skillfully and was about to take another step when—

“Who’s there?”