Kensei Jon's Arc

Chapter 12 of 49

The table came first. Kensei carried it up from a seller two streets down and set it in the light. Jeon-min laid the sketch flat and pinned the corners. For three days the sketch sat by the proprietor's front door where guests could see it. No one knocked. Kensei counted the coins again each night. One month held. The second did not. "The sketch is on her wall," Kensei said. "No one comes." Jeon-min did not look up from his thread. "Then we go to them." "Go where?" "The festival wears people out. Torn hems. Loose ties. Split seams." He counted on his fingers. "They fix nothing until it falls apart. Then it's too late." He set down the needle. "We find them before it's too late." So they went out. Kensei carried the folded work cloth and a basket of thread. Jeon-min carried the sketch. He stopped every person in worn festival clothes. A woman with a frayed collar. An old man whose sash hung by one thread. Jeon-min pointed at each flaw before they knew it was there. "Your collar will tear by the next festival," he told the woman. "I can save it now." He held up the sketch. "This is my work. My family's pattern. Bring it to the guesthouse." Most people walked on. Kensei watched Jeon-min take each no without flinching and move to the next. Jeon-min did not soften his words. He named the flaw, named the price, and stopped. Kensei had seen him do this only with cloth. Now he did it with strangers, and it worked the same way. By dusk three had promised to come. Kensei did not believe promises. "They said yes to be free of us." "Some did," Jeon-min said. "Not all." The next morning a knock came at the lattice door. The old man stood there with his sash in both hands. Behind him waited the woman with the frayed collar, and a mother holding a child's torn festival coat. Jeon-min took the sash first. He spread it on the table in the light. He worked the knot pattern into the mend, the one his great-grandmother made. The old man watched his hands and did not speak. When it was done he turned the sash over twice. "I have never seen this," the old man said. He paid, and he told the mother to look. She paid too. By midday the coins covered the second month, and part of a third. Kensei stacked them on the table. For the first time the pile grew instead of shrank. He had a place. He had a trade that fed the place. He looked at Jeon-min bent over the child's coat, his needle moving. "We can hold it now," Kensei said. "We can hold it," Jeon-min said. Then he glanced up. "The fifth city. When this steadies, we go. You come with me." "Okay," Kensei said. This time the word meant a plan, not surrender.