Kensei Jon's Arc

Chapter 42 of 49

The morning after the locked door, Kensei ate breakfast with Jeon-min at the market hall. No one stared. They came back the next day, and the next. Word spread. A woman asked where Jeon-min bought his red and blue jacket. He told her he made it. She paid for one before it existed. Within a month, Jeon-min sewed by lamplight until his fingers cramped, and Kensei filled a ledger with names. "We can't sew fast enough," Jeon-min said one night. He set down his needle. "One city buys everything. Four cities want it and can't reach us." Kensei looked at the map of craftspeople Jeon-min kept in his bag. Jeon-min had marked shops in every city where they had passed. "Then we open a store in each," Kensei said. "Your clothes. And the blessing book, copied out, for anyone who wants to read it." Jeon-min stared at him. "The book says want is not shame. You want to sell that in five cities." "I want people to read it," Kensei said. "Ha-ni won't be the only one." They spent their savings on cloth and hired two seamstresses in the fifth city. Kensei traveled to the four other cities with the trade license stamped by the royal seal. In each city he found a shop to rent. He showed the clerk his papers. No clerk turned him away. He hired a person in each city to sell Jeon-min's jackets and the copied pages of the kamayaki blessing, written plain in their own language. It took three months. When Kensei returned home, five stores stood open. Jeon-min's knot pattern hung in five windows. The blessing sat on five counters, free for anyone to read. Coin came back faster than they could count it. Jeon-min held the ledger and did the sums twice. "We have more than we ever had," he said. "More than my great-grandmother made in her whole life." He set the ledger down. He did not smile. "What," Kensei said. "The blessing is in five cities now." Jeon-min looked at the door. "Anyone can read it. The clerks. The neighbors. The ones who follow the faith that burned these books." Kensei went still. He had thought only of Ha-ni finding it. He had not thought of who else might find it, and hate it. That evening a man came to the fifth city store. Kensei was there. The man picked up the blessing page and read it. His face closed. "You sell this openly," he said. "You should be careful." He set the page down and walked out. Kensei watched him go. The store was full. The jackets sold. The coin was real. But the man's words stayed. Their love was no longer secret in one house. It was written on five counters, where anyone could carry it back to people who still called it sin. "That's a different lock," Jeon-min had said. Now it was open, in five cities at once.