Chapter 39: The Snow Queen Appears

Jinhae

The pavilion did not get quieter as the hour ran down.

It got meaner.

Boots scraped stone. Someone laughed too loud near the eastern arch and then stopped when an instructor looked over. A girl in healer blue threw up into a bucket and kept walking. Oil. Sweat. Cold draft off the floor grates from whatever they had buried under this place.

Ahyun sat on my left with her hands folded so tightly the knuckles had gone white.

Seolhwa stood.

She had not sat once since we claimed this stretch of wall. Both swords rode her hip. The Haeun travel robes were clean. The bindings underneath stayed hidden. Eyes stayed on the blades.

“Team Twelve,” an official called.

A cluster of Orthodox whites stood and moved. One of them was already reciting a formation under his breath.

“Team Thirteen.”

Unorthodox blacks. Four women. They did not recite anything. They just walked.

“Team Fourteen.”

“Young Master,” Ahyun whispered. “That man. The one in white. People keep looking at him.”

“They should,” I said. “That’s Baek Museong.”

Seorin’s breath caught. Small. Controlled. The Good Girl Mask almost hid it.

“The Baek heir,” she said. “They say the Alliance already calls him the next Sword Saint.”

“Team Fifteen.”

Ahyun’s shoulder brushed mine.

“You brought the cane,” she said, very low. “You don’t need it anymore.”

“I know.”

“Then why—”

I rolled the cane once in my fingers.

The grip turned against my palm. A hidden collar clicked. I drew.

Steel came free of the hollow shaft in a short, clean pull: a scholar’s blade.

I let her see the edge.

Then I seated it. The shaft closed. The cane was a cane again.

“Because it is not a cane.”

Ahyun’s mouth stayed open.

“Team Seventeen.”

Ahyun stood so fast her healer tag jumped.

Seorin rose with both hands on her cloak, then remembered she was supposed to look calm and dropped them.

Seolhwa was already a half-step ahead of me.

We cut through the crowd toward the northern line of gates.

The gates were iron-bound timber set into the pavilion floor at regular intervals, each one marked with a carved number and a seal-script ward that made the air above the threshold taste like cold metal. Officials stood at every third post with slates. Beyond the nearest open gate I saw only dark, and a stone stair going down.

Team Sixteen vanished into Gate Nine.

We were almost to the official when it happened.

A shoulder hit me before I understood it. The cane skittered. The floor came up fast.

I hit on my side hard enough to knock the breath out.

The pavilion noise dipped in a circle around us. The ugly little hush people made when they wanted to watch and pretend they were not watching.

Ahyun cried out.

“Young Master—!”

Seolhwa’s hand was on a hilt before my shoulder finished sliding.

“Stop,” I said.

She froze with the steel a finger-width from clear.

Baek Museong looked down.

He had not even broken stride until after I was already on the floor.

“What,” he said, “is a cripple from the support track doing in my way?”

I had forgotten this.

In the game it played as flavor. A throwaway line if you ran a combat build. Museong hated support candidates.

I laughed.

Museong’s eyes narrowed.

“Something funny?”

“Nothing you’d hear,” I said.

He stared for half a second longer. Then he decided I was not worth a second sentence.

He walked.

I was still on the floor.

I was going to take every woman standing in his shadow.

He would not notice until the routes were already gone.

A hand entered my vision.

Pale. Fine-boned.

The voice that came with it was soft.

“I am sorry. Please, allow me.”

I looked up past the hand.

White hair. Her face was the Baek face refined down to something almost breakable. Delicate mouth. Pale lashes. Eyes the color of winter water over stone.

Baek Soyeon. The Snow Queen.

The epithet came after the northern campaign. Right now she was just a girl in white with a spear on her back and an apology she did not owe.

She was also one of the hardest heroines in the entire roster. Ice arts. Ice temperament. The route required a specific sequence of humiliations, debts, and quiet choices that most players abandoned by the mid-game.

She was standing in front of me with her hand out.

Pity.

The flag lit in my head before the panel did.

I took her hand.

“I am sorry for my brother,” she said. “He does not always look where he walks when his blood is up. The evaluation has him… sharp.”

I took the cane.

“You didn’t have to come back.”

A faint crease touched her brow.

“I did.”

“Then thank you.” I let a small smile show. “Kang Jinhae. Support. Your brother has a very strong shoulder. You can tell him I said so, if he ever asks.”

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BAEK SOYEON

Younger Sister — Baek Family

Spear / Ice Arts

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Affection ............... 7 / 100

Lust .................... 3 / 100

Trust ................... 11 → 24 / 100 ↑↑

Submission .............. 4 / 100

Fear .................... 9 / 100

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Relationship Status: Stranger / Pity

*— Free Trust

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The game had always been like this with her. You could grind gifts for a year and move the bar a finger-width. Or you could be the cripple her honorable brother put on the floor, and she would hand you Trust because her spine would not let her walk away from a mess with the Baek name on it.

“Soyeon!”

Museong’s voice cut across the hush.

“Do not waste time on trash. We are next.”

Soyeon’s eyes closed for half a breath.

“I am sorry,” she said again, to me, quieter. “Please be careful below. The first floor is not kind.”

“Neither is the ground floor,” I said.

She inclined her head, white hair sliding forward, and then she was moving. A well-raised girl fleeing an embarrassment without looking like she was fleeing.

I watched her rejoin them.

Left of Museong was Harin.

Heiress of the Iron Serpent Sect. The largest Unorthodox Faction house in the northern provinces. Their reputation was ruthlessness first and political marriages second.

She glanced back once.

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HARIN

Heiress — Iron Serpent Sect

Unorthodox Faction

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Affection ............... 2 / 100

Lust .................... 11 / 100

Trust ................... 4 / 100

Submission .............. 6 / 100

Fear .................... 5 / 100

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Relationship Status: Stranger

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The third woman walked on Museong’s right.

Dark hair, shorter than Harin’s, cut practical at the shoulder. Gray-and-black robes with a lotus stitched at the collar.

Jinmu.

One of the Shadow Lotus Hall’s named successors. Museong’s childhood friend.

Both of them could be heroines.

The game allowed it. Affection routes. Slow trust. A mid-game confession if you dumped enough Seduction Points into the Unorthodox track and never let Museong’s honor quests lock them first.

Most players never finished those routes.

The common path was simpler. Harin and Jinmu both carried hidden flags that opened demonic pacts. Whenever Museong’s started costing them more than it paid, they turned. They became the villains standing on the other side.

That was the route I wanted.

I didn’t like either of them. That made the work clean. Girls I could punish without the guilt that came with Ahyun or Minji.

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JINMU

Heir — Shadow Lotus Hall

Childhood Bond (Baek Museong)

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Affection ............... 1 / 100

Lust .................... 5 / 100

Trust ................... 3 / 100

Submission .............. 8 / 100

Fear .................... 7 / 100

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Relationship Status: Stranger

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Gate Four. Museong went through without looking back. Harin followed like a blade in a sheath she had chosen. Jinmu went third, a half-step off his right shoulder, childhood geometry. Soyeon soon after.

The fourth kept to his left rear. White robes. No name I remembered. Not a route.

Ahyun spun on me.

“Young Master.” Her voice shook. “He hit you. He called you—”

“I heard him.”

“Let me—” She stopped. “He should not be allowed to speak to you like that.”

“He is allowed to speak however he wants,” I said. “That is what a Martial Spirit of his grade buys in a room like this.”

Seolhwa had not taken her hand off the hilt.

“I can take him.”

I looked at her.

“Not today. If you draw on Baek Museong in this pavilion, the evaluation ends for all four of us.”

The muscle in her jaw ticked.

She let the hilt go.

Seorin had both hands clasped in front of her cloak again. The Good Girl Mask was back.

The official at our mark did not look up until my tag was on his table.

“Team Seventeen,” he said. “Kang Jinhae. Haeun Seol. Ahyun of House Kang. Lee Seorin.” He checked each name against the chop. “Gate Twelve. First floor only. If you pass the boundary seal you will be pulled and marked failed. Questions?”

“None,” I said.

“Then go.”

Gate Twelve stood open on a throat of dark.

The first floor opened in front of us.