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The first true snow of winter had settled upon the mountains, draping the world in a blanket of hushed white.
Cheongmyeong trudged through the quiet courtyards of the alliance headquarters, his breath misting in the sharp, cold air.
He had successfully avoided this place for weeks, but the relentless badgering from sect leader Hyun Jong and the increasingly sharp memos from elder Hyun Young had finally cornered him.
He pushed open the heavy door to the shared administrative office.
The scene inside was deceptively peaceful.
A fire crackled warmly in the hearth, fighting back the winter chill. And there, at a desk piled high with scrolls and ledgers, sat the Green Forest King, Im Sobyeong.
The bandit lord, now one of key pillar of the formed alliance, was diligently stamping a document with the official seal of the Cheonumaeng.
But it wasn't the paperwork that made Cheongmyeong pause. It was the strange contraption perched on the man's face.
A pair of thin, silver-rimmed lenses sat on his nose, connected by a delicate bridge and hooked behind his ears.
They made his eyes look… different.
Sharper, yet oddly magnified.
“What’s that on your face?”
Cheongmyeong blurted out, his own troubles momentarily forgotten.
“It makes you look funny. Like a startled owl.”
Im Sobyeong reached up and tapped the side of the glasses frame.
“Oh, this? This is a reading aid. Our craftsmen in Nokrim replicated it from designs acquired from the Western Regions.”
Cheongmyeong squinted. “It has a different shape than Elder Hyun Young’s.”
“His are progressive lenses—for seeing both a hawk across a valley and the fine script of an ancient manual," Sobyeong explained patiently.
"These are simple reading glasses, for seeing the flaws in an accountant’s ledger. They magnify smaller text.”
Before Sobyeong could react, Cheongmyeong darted forward, snatched the glasses, and shoved them onto his face.
They sat crookedly, one lens over his eye, the other over his cheekbone.
He immediately blinked, his face scrunching in disgust as he looked around the room.
“Bah! It’s all blurry! This is a terrible invention! It’s worse than having no eyes at all!”
“That’s because they are reading glasses, Dojang." Sobyeong sighed. He plucked a small ledger from his desk and thrust it into Cheongmyeong’s hands. “Try this. Look at the characters.”
Grumbling, Cheongmyeong looked down at the page.
The tiny, densely packed script, which usually required a moment of focus, now sprang into impossibly sharp and clear detail.
He could see every stroke, every subtle ink bleed.
His eyebrows rose in surprise.
“Huh.” He grunted, noncommittally.
He flipped a page. Then another.
“Well… I suppose it keeps the characters from dancing around. This is useful for old people.”
“And for people with reduced eyesight,” Sobyeong added dryly.
Cheongmyeong’s head snapped up, the glasses sliding down his nose.
“You’ve lost your seeing skill? Is this a side effect of being a bandit king? Too much squinting in the dark to count your ill-gotten gold?”
“I have not lost my skill,” Sobyeong retorted, his patience thinning visibly.
“It simply prevents eye strain when reviewing a mountain of documents—a mountain of it, I might add, that has your name on a significant portion of it.”
Ignoring the jab, Cheongmyeong looked back at the ledger, a covetous glint in his eyes.
“Fine. I’ll take these.”
“Wait. Why are you taking them?” Sobyeong asked, incredulous. “They were made specifically for me.”
“I am old,” Cheongmyeong declared with the profound gravity of a sage stating an universal truth.
Im Sobyeong stared at him, utterly deadpan. “You are literally younger than I am.”
A heavy silence hung in the room, broken only by the pop from the fire.
The two men.
One a legendary swordman, the other a bandit king turned administrator—locked eyes in a battle of wills over a pair of reading glasses.
"Hah."
Finally, Sobyeong let out a long, weary exhale, the fight draining out of him.
He knew this was a war he could not win.
The Hwasan Righteous Sword in many ways, the most formidable bandit of them all.
“Fine. Take them.”
He conceded, rubbing the bridge of his nose where the glasses had once sat.
“I have a spare pair.”
Cheongmyeong grinned triumphantly, adjusting the new accessory on his face before flopping into his chair, which was conspicuously clean of any work.
He propped his feet up on the desk, sending a small avalanche of untouched scrolls tumbling to the floor.
“Good. Now, where is the flaw? We have work to do.”
Sobyeong could only sigh again, picking up his spare glasses and the Cheonumaeng seal.
As he returned to stamping documents, a wry thought crossed his mind.
'At this point, one has to wonder just who the real bandit in this room is.'