Lady of Dreams Page 7

  As if on cue, I felt the first stirrings of a Dream beckoning at the edges of my mind, and with it the faint thrumming of the gayageum. That was slightly startling; had I conjured up a Dream of Yong-hwa simply by thinking about him? I tried to push it away, but like my other Dreams lately, it proved rather stronger and more sticky than I was capable of resisting for long.

  Eun-hee, who was quite familiar with my vagaries even if she wasn’t explicitly aware of their root cause, saw my distraction almost immediately and said, “Aigoo, you’re starting early, Clovis-a!”

  “It was a long journey,” I said absently. “Sorry, Unni. Carlin had better take me to my room, I think.”

  “Yes, miss,” said Carlin, though I hadn’t been talking to him. He was watching me intently—probably had been since the Dream began to circle, waiting to be given the order. Sometimes Carlin is inclined to be overprotective.

  “Your chaise longue should already be upstairs,” said Eun-hee, hovering as Carlin picked me up. She gave the impression that she would have liked to carry me up herself, which was a little bit amusing. “I’ve made a few changes to your room. I think you’ll like them. We’ll talk tomorrow, when you’re more rested.”

  “Tomorrow,” I agreed, flicking my fingers languidly at her over Carlin’s shoulder as he carried me from the room. When I was tired of ineffectually pushing the Dream away from me, I allowed it to swallow me whole, sinking through layers of Dream until Carlin’s stiff-collared neck disappeared from sight and I saw Yong-hwa kneeling at his gayageum instead. At first I thought it was raining, the steady percussion of raindrops hitting the roof above falling on my ears, but it occurred to me a moment later that there was a distinct melody to that rain. A glance out the window confirming that it was a sunny afternoon, I came to the startling conclusion that the “rain” was, in fact, Yong-hwa’s long fingers against the strings of the gayageum. I’d often heard that the gayageum was intended to mimic the sounds of nature—whispering wind, gently falling rain—but I’d never before heard it played so.

  “All right,” I said to the unhearing Yong-hwa, “this is less boring.” There was another focal point tugging from outside the room, suggesting that someone else found his playing worth listening to, and when I peeped through the wall, Ae-jung was again crouched in the hall. This time she was listening to Yong-hwa’s gayageum with great attention, and not whimpering in a mess of coffee and shredded paper. What was this? Had Hyun-jun kicked her out again?

  I wandered briefly through the wall between Yong-hwa’s and Hyun-jun’s apartments, raising a brow at the almost painful cleanliness of Hyun-jun’s sleeping quarters as I passed through them and into his office. He was there with another woman, prompting me to raise the other brow. He was less spikily guarded with this woman than he was with Ae-jung, but from the slight curl of his upper lip, I was quite sure that his ease didn’t come from either respect or liking. That was oddly appropriate for Hyun-jun—to be at ease only with those he actively disliked or despised.

  When I got there, the woman was saying, “—but there’s no need to be prickly about it, Oppa. We agreed from the beginning that this sort of thing would happen.”

  “I’ve already accepted another invitation,” said Hyun-jun.

  “Eun-hee unni? Her card is still on the mantle-piece.”

  “I gave her a verbal answer,” Hyun-jun said coldly. “I told you I would end it when it was no longer of use to me, Se-ri-ssi.”

  “And I told you that I’d keep it going for as long as it was useful to me,” said Se-ri, with a big, bright smile. Her face was unsettling. It was soft and kind, with bright, sparkling eyes and eyebrows that arched in a friendly way, but there was a hardness to the glitter of her eyes and a sharpness to her voice that belied the gentleness of her general appearance. She’d worked well with her clothes to complement that appearance of softness: she wore pastel pinks and blues in a clinging fabric that brought out the smooth girlishness of her face and the gentle gracefulness of her curves. She was probably prettier than Ae-jung, if one were to look at it impartially, but who ever does look at things impartially? Even I don’t.

  “Don’t forget,” said Se-ri, with a sweet smile, “that we signed a contract. I simply don’t know what I’d do if you were to abandon me, Oppa. What do you think? Have I lost weight? I’ve been so worried!”

  She’d mistaken her quarry. Hyun-jun looked her up and down disinterestedly and said, “You’ve gained a little weight around your chin, actually. Don’t worry; I’m not going to break the contract. I’m simply not going to renew it. You can’t do anything about that. Use the next two months wisely, Se-ri-ssi.”

  “According to the contract—”

  “I only have to agree to outings with you when they don’t interfere with other important engagements. This is an important engagement.”

  Very important, I thought, raising my brows appreciatively. He hadn’t even let Eun-hee know whether or not he was coming. Well, Eun-hee would be pleased, at least. I would let her know when I woke up that Hyun-jun was very likely to show up. I passed back through the wall to Ae-jung and the gentle sound of Yong-hwa’s music floating through the air; I had the feeling that Hyun-jun would very shortly kick his guest out, which meant that the corridor would be more interesting before long.

  Ae-jung was still looking vaguely despondent, but her head was turned to hear Yong-hwa’s music. Whatever it was Hyun-jun had said when he kicked her out, Yong-hwa’s music was certainly cheering her up. I was fairly certain that, back in my Reality, my own head was tilted just the same way. Was this the music he had been writing over the last two weeks, then? I could get used to following Yong-hwa in my Dreams if I were to be treated to music like this.

  I was so caught up in listening to the music that I jumped as much as Ae-jung when Hyun-jun threw open his door, cracking it against the wall.

  “You,” he said to Ae-jung. “Who said you could leave the room?”

  Ah! So it hadn’t been Hyun-jun who kicked her out.

  Ae-jung stood hastily. “Oh! That is—Seonbae, the agassi—”

  “I told her to leave while you were on the balcony,” said Se-ri innocently. “I didn’t think you’d like other people to overhear what we had to say to each other. So personal!”

  “There was nothing personal,” said Hyun-jun crushingly. “You—there’s still work to be done. Go back inside. Goodbye, Se-ri-ssi.”

  Se-ri’s eyes widened, and though I didn’t see anger in her face, I did see a distinct tightening of the plump smile. “Aren’t you going to walk me out, Oppa?”

  Hyun-jun said, “No,” and, hauling Ae-jung back into the room, promptly closed the door.

  I tried to follow the carefully smiling Se-ri when she left, but the Dream wouldn’t let me. Instead it remained, as sticky as gum, around Hyun-jun and Ae-jung. That was a pity. I would have liked to see more of Se-ri. She was interesting in a cockatrice kind of way: alien and very, very deadly.

  As a kind of rebellion, I pushed far enough away from Hyun-jun and Ae-jung to take myself back to Yong-hwa’s Dream instead. “I’m reduced to following you around,” I said, to his unresponsive face. I was a little curious, though. Like the other Dreams recently, this one was laughably unimportant. Importance is, of course, a matter of perspective, but since I don’t have feeling enough to go around, I very rarely consider what is important to other people. These Dreams I could understand as being important to Ae-jung, Hyun-jun, and even Yong-hwa, to some extent. It was a mystery why they were appearing to me.

  “Why are you important? I don’t care about you,” I said to Yong-hwa, in a companionable sort of way. He smiled over his gayageum, as deep in his own world as I was in my Dreams, and made an unexpectedly throbbing note on three strings at once. I said, “Ow. That was a bit heavy, wasn’t it?” but he only smiled again. He knew. He knew that Ae-jung had been out there listening; this was a performance.

  I drifted there for the next few hours while Yong-hwa went off on tangents and explor
ed variations upon his theme, content without being bored, for a wonder. I was used to the feeling of boredom; I was not used to the feeling of gentle contentment.

  When Ae-jung left Hyun-jun’s sitting room that afternoon, it seemed good to me to follow her. Much to my surprise, she stopped and knocked at Yong-hwa’s door.

  “Ah. Something must have happened before I got here,” I said. That wasn’t surprising; I usually fought off the Dreams for as long as I could, and I often missed important things. To Yong-hwa, who was opening the door, I said, “I still don’t care.”

  I thought Yong-hwa was surprised to see Ae-jung, but it would have been hard to say why I thought so. His face didn’t really change, except to smile a little.

  “Thank you for the music,” Ae-jung said. She gave him the same glad, sunny smile that she usually gave Hyun-jun, and that did have an effect: Yong-hwa blinked and fell back half a step.

  “That will teach you to be so bored all the time,” I murmured, from my lurking place.

  This time, Yong-hwa’s smile was a full, beautiful thing. “I’m glad you enjoyed it,” he said. “It’s not finished yet; I’m writing it for a certain young lady and I’m not quite sure how it’s going to turn out. Come along early tomorrow before you start, and I’ll play you the new movement.”

  “Oh, but Seonbae—”

  “You can sit out in the hall again,” said Yong-hwa, the smile spreading to his eyes in a deepening of warmth. “We can’t have the boarders seeing a young lady visiting the rooms of two men.”

  “Yes!” said Ae-jung in relief, and then, at Yong-hwa’s low laugh, “No—I mean—Seonbae, you shouldn’t tease me.”

  Yong-hwa looked down at her for a smiling moment. “I shouldn’t, should I? Ae-jung-ssi, be in the corridor tomorrow at eight. I would like to know what you think about the second movement.”

  “You want to know if your young lady will like it?”

  A brief smile flitted across Yong-hwa’s lips once again. “Something like that. You must listen carefully.”

  “I will, Seonbae,” promised Ae-jung, bowing far too cheerfully and energetically for me to think she’d understood him. What a completely oblivious young woman. “I’ll listen carefully tomorrow.”

  When she left, Yong-hwa was still smiling, and that was interesting enough almost to make me forget about following Ae-jung. “She’s oblivious,” I told Yong-hwa, by way of a parting shot—or perhaps by way of a warning, as useless as it was. “And she’s half in love with Hyun-jun already. You’re going to have to be very clever.” Then I left him to his smiles and wafted after Ae-jung like an early summer mist. This time the Dream let me do as I wished.

  Ae-jung, as was her wont, went back to the publishing house. She was met at the door by Jessamy, who said urgently, “The Scandian Sundrops, where are they?”

  “I gave them to you last week,” said Ae-jung, with surprise. “They were in the silk-wrapped box with the golden rosette?”

  Jessamy’s face brightened, then fell. “Yes! You gave them to me? When? I don’t remember.”

  “They were in the box of gifts and proofs for the Sunrise Company. Proofs underneath, gifts on top, and a Stay-Cool cover for the Sundrops because it’s been warm lately.”

  “Aish!” Jessamy stared at her in dismay. “But I put that . . . I put it—Aish!”

  He dashed back into the building and bounded up the stairs three at a time, bursting into his office with Ae-jung close behind. “Wae, Jessamy-ssi? Where are they?”

  Jessamy, frantically kicking aside piles of paper and furniture as he dived for the wall behind his desk, gave a wail of despair and sank to his knees in front of the Contraption heat vent. “Aish! I didn’t know the Scandian Sundrops were in the box! They’re—oh, they’re really melted.”

  A well-known, gravelly voice spoke from the doorway behind Ae-jung. “Jessamy-a.”

  Jessamy shot to his feet. “Ye, Sajangnim!”

  “Why haven’t you given Ae-jung-ssi the proofs and the chocolates? They’re to be delivered tomorrow afternoon.”

  “That—Well, Sajangnim—”

  “I made a mistake, Sajangnim,” said Ae-jung, her head lowered. “I didn’t tell Jessamy-ssi—”

  “What are you doing?” said Jessamy, almost angrily. “It was my fault, Abeonim; I was careless about where I put the chocolates and they’re all melted.”

  My father closed his eyes for a brief moment. “Mwoh?”

  “I didn’t tell Jessamy-ssi that the chocolates were in the box—”

  “I didn’t take proper care of the box—”

  “Enough.”

  They both fell silent with a sideways look at each other.

  “Jessamy-a.”

  “Ye, Abeonim.”

  “You’ll go out tomorrow and find another tray of Sundrops.”

  I raised a brow. Real Scandian Sundrops in an Eppan city? That was unlikely. And it was even more unlikely that a potential client wouldn’t be offended to receive imitation Sundrops; someone important enough to be given such an expensive gift would no doubt be rich enough to know the difference between real and fake Scandian confectionary.

  His eyes flicking toward Ae-jung, whose head was still bowed, my father added, “Take Ae-jung-ssi with you.”

  I could almost see Jessamy’s lips forming the words I don’t want to. Just as well for him, he remembered exactly whom it was he was talking to, and instead said, albeit not very graciously, “Where do you want us to go? The market?”

  “Anywhere,” said my father. “And any expense. Stay out all day if you need to; just make sure you get the best.”

  Jessamy bowed, wincing. “Ye, Abeonim.”

  The next morning I woke just enough to dress myself in the clothes that Carlin had laid out for me, and again when he lifted me from the bed to a seat that wasn’t my chaise longue but was just as comfortable. It broke my sleep enough to push me into the Dreams again, and I found myself sighing a yawn into Yong-hwa’s face again.

  “What is this?” I asked in surprise, pushing away. It was rather disturbing, waking up face-to-face with Yong-hwa when he was smiling that particular smile that wasn’t quite a smile.

  Come to that, why was he smiling? Ah. Ae-jung was meant to be in the corridor, listening, wasn’t she? Yong-hwa was setting up his gayageum, the warmth of a smile in his eyes, and his cheeks very sharp. He looked up at the door once, taking in a breath through his teeth, and kept setting up.

  “You should have checked first,” I told him, wafting over to the window, where I could listen without feeling annoyingly close to Yong-hwa’s melodic presence. “She can’t come today. She’ll be out looking for Sundrops.”

  How was Hyun-jun going to feel? Ae-jung wouldn’t come until late, if she came at all. He would be put out, of course, and probably more than vaguely cantankerous. Ae-jung was going to have to do much smoothing of ruffled feathers when she did arrive.

  I only meant to take a quick peep at Hyun-jun through Yong-hwa’s wall before wandering on to find Ae-jung and Jessamy. Yong-hwa was nothing to do with me, after all. But then he began to play, and time and Dream melted together into one light, bright whole that was something new altogether. It buoyed me up and carried me away in a thrumming of dancing notes that laughed and played and tripped over themselves, making me think irresistibly of Ae-jung. I emerged, blinking, only when the last note sounded and Yong-hwa sat back with the smallest of smiles, his eyelids dropped and his face still.

  “She’s not there, though,” I told him as he rose and opened the door, somewhat surprised to find that I was there yet. The smile was still on Yong-hwa’s face as he opened the door, but when he saw the empty hall it vanished completely. He tapped long fingers against the door and then dropped his head with a small, hissed laugh and went back inside. No sooner had he done so than Hyun-jun’s door opened abruptly and Hyun-jun also stared up and down the empty hallway, his gaze wild and offended.

  “Time for me to go, I think,” I said. Yong-hwa had begun to p
lay his gayageum again, and I didn’t particularly like the way it tugged at me. I would go and find Jessamy.

  I found him just entering the street markets with Ae-jung.

  “You didn’t have to come,” he said, hunching his shoulders and shoving his hands in his pockets.

  “Sajangnim gave orders,” said Ae-jung.

  “And that’s another thing! Stop trying to look after me!”

  Ae-jung stared at him. “Looking—I wasn’t! It was my fault, Jessamy-ssi. I knew that the Sundrops needed to be kept at the right temperature, but I didn’t make it clear to you that they were in the box.”

  Jessamy looked at her, perplexed, for quite some time. Then he said, unexpectedly, “You shouldn’t do that, Nuna.”

  Ae-jung, confused and amused at the same time, laughed. “Do what?”

  “Stop taking the blame for things. Do you think it’ll make my father like you better?”

  “Make him like—” Ae-jung stopped, frowning, and just as suddenly brightened with her flowerlike smile. “Ah! So that’s why! Jessamy-ssi, I don’t need Sohn Sajangnim to like me; I just need to do well and not lose my job.”

  “Well—” Jessamy opened and closed his mouth. “You—then stop taking the blame for things! My father won’t keep you on if he thinks you’re incompetent.”

  “Then I’ll just have to do better,” said Ae-jung. “Come on, Jessamy-ssi; we have to find Sundrops quickly.”

  “I know that!” said Jessamy, but he was more gruff than actually unfriendly, and the grimace he gave her was the closest thing to a smile that I’d seen him send in Ae-jung’s direction. “We’ll start at the high-end stalls, then. Maybe we’ll be lucky.”

  “Nae,” agreed Ae-jung, though she didn’t look hopeful. She was possibly just as well aware as I was how unlikely it was that an Eppan street stall would have Scandian Sundrops. Fortunately for Jessamy, she was also just privileged enough to be able to tell the difference between the fake and the real. She would make sure he didn’t pay for something that wasn’t the genuine article. I knew how badly Jessamy wanted to do well in my father’s eyes, and although I couldn’t really understand the feeling, I wanted him to have everything that made him happy.