The Blind Swordmaster Took In His Own Assassin novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: What the Room Looks Like

Ryeo-won made Ra-on describe the room he was killing him in, and Ra-on told the truth by accident.

"Describe the kitchen," said the Blind Swordmaster.

Ra-on looked up from the onions.

Ryeo-won was sitting on the kitchen floor with his back against the stove wall.

He had a cup of barley tea balanced on one knee, and he looked entirely at home.

"You know the kitchen," Ra-on said.

"I know where things are."

"I don't know what they look like."

"Dong-ju says everything is brown."

"Everything is brown."

"That's what a boy of nineteen says about a room."

"Try again."

Ra-on put the knife down.

Nobody had ever asked him for a picture of anything.

The Hall had taught him to see a room as exits, weapons and witnesses.

He looked at the kitchen again.

"The beams are black from smoke," he said.

"There's a water stain on the ceiling shaped like a hen."

"A string of red peppers hangs by the window."

"The morning comes through it, so the whole wall is the color of a persimmon."

"The color of a persimmon," Ryeo-won repeated softly.

"There's a crack in the third pot, and someone mended it with rice paste."

"And you're sitting in the one patch of sun."

"It's on your hair."

Ryeo-won tilted his face.

"Is it nice?"

"It's," Ra-on said, and his voice did something strange.

"It's very nice."

"Thank you, Mu-seok."

Ryeo-won drank his tea.

Ra-on stood there with a hot face.

He had the terrible feeling he had just given away more than any knife could.

That afternoon he made Ryeo-won's tea himself.

The poison was a paste he had rubbed inside his sleeve for three days, the Hall's best, with no taste and a slow hand.

It would look like a bad heart.

He stirred it into the cup as he poured.

He carried the cup out to the porch, where Ryeo-won sat with Dong-ju's practice sword across his knees, turning it over by feel.

"Tea," Ra-on said.

Ryeo-won held out a hand.

Ra-on put the cup in it.

The tips of Ryeo-won's fingers brushed his knuckles and stayed there a moment, and then the cup rose toward his mouth.

Ra-on lunged and knocked it out of his hand.

The cup hit the boards and broke.

The tea ran down between the planks.

"Sorry," Ra-on said.

"I slipped."

"You didn't slip," Ryeo-won said mildly.

"I heard the whole thing."

"Your breath stopped, your heel turned and your elbow came out."

"Then why didn't you dodge it?" Ra-on demanded.

He did not know which of them he was angry with.

"I was busy being brought tea," Ryeo-won said, and smiled.

"Clumsy man, for a cook with four knives."

Ra-on swept up the pieces on his knees, with shaking hands.

When he looked up, Ryeo-won had found his hair and was stroking it.

Dong-ju found them like that and left again, very loudly.

That night Ryeo-won called him to his room.

The lamp was out, which meant nothing to Ryeo-won and everything to Ra-on.

Ryeo-won sat on the edge of his mat in his shirtsleeves, and the moon laid a silver bar across his scarred eyes.

"Come here," he said.

Ra-on came.

"Take your tunic off."

"I want to find you."

Ra-on took it off.

Ryeo-won's hands went over his shoulders and down his ribs, reading him.

He made a low, pleased sound when he found the hollow beside Ra-on's hip bone.

Then he drew Ra-on down onto the mat, on his back.

"Tell me what you like," Ryeo-won said, "and I'll listen."

"I don't know," Ra-on said.

"Nobody ever asks."

"I'm asking."

Ryeo-won's mouth was warm on Ra-on's stomach.

It moved down by slow inches, and Ra-on felt him smile against his skin when his hips lifted on their own.

"Ah," Ryeo-won said.

"There."

He pulled Ra-on's trousers away and took his hard cock into his mouth.

Ra-on made a sound he had been swallowing for eleven years.

Ryeo-won's tongue was slow and sure, swirling around the head and licking the sensitive underside of the shaft until Ra-on's back arched off the mat.

He hummed, that off-key tune he made when he thought nobody listened, and the vibration around his cock went through Ra-on's whole body.

"Please," Ra-on said.

"Please what?"

"Don't stop."

"I won't."

"You taste so good."

"Let me hear you."

Ra-on let him hear.

He put both hands in Ryeo-won's hair, and Ryeo-won let him.

He was not gentle, fucking his hips up into that hot mouth, and Ryeo-won moaned his approval against the inside of his thigh.

Then Ryeo-won sucked him deeper down his throat, and Ra-on came hard into his mouth with a man's name on his tongue.

"Ryeo-won," he gasped as Ryeo-won swallowed his cum.

Ryeo-won stilled against his hip.

"That's my name," he said slowly.

"You've called me Master until now."

Ra-on's heart stopped.

He had read that name in a file in the Hall.

"Dong-ju shouts it at the chickens," he lied.

"Does he," said Ryeo-won.

He sat up and found Ra-on's face and kissed him, and Ra-on tasted his own salt on his mouth.

"Your turn," Ryeo-won said, his voice low and rough.

"I'd like it very much."

Ra-on knelt over him and undid his sash.

Ryeo-won's thick cock was hard and flushed in his hands.

He let his head fall back against the wall with a groan when Ra-on sank his mouth down over the shaft.

Ra-on had done this a hundred times, as a job.

He had never done it with a man's fingers in his hair like that, so careful, while he hollowed his cheeks and sucked him deep.

"You're beautiful," Ryeo-won said.

"I can't see you, and I know you are."

"Oh, servant, don't stop."

"Don't stop."

Ryeo-won came down his throat, shuddering and soft-voiced, and then pulled Ra-on up into his lap and held him.

They lay tangled for a long while, not speaking.

"If someone ever comes for me in the night," Ryeo-won said into his hair, very quietly, "don't stand in front."

"Promise me."

"Who would come?" Ra-on asked.

"Anyone," said the Blind Swordmaster.

"Everyone."

Ra-on did not promise.

At dawn a pedlar stood at the gate, selling needles and ribbon.

A black heron was tattooed on the inside of his wrist.

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