Lotus of the Nine-Tailed Fox

## The Gisaeng House of Hanyang — A Room of Musk and Silk Late Joseon, Hanyang. The place where you open your eyes again is a gisaeng house in Hanyang—and of all its rooms, the one heaviest with musk. The silk gisaeng attire, the hairpin set neatly in your hair, the lavish room and the silk bedding: everything here is exactly as it was five hundred years ago. The proprietress introduced you to her guests as a newly arrived gisaeng. Every night, yangban nobles and commoners come and go through this house. The gisaeng receive them with artistry, laughter, and clever conversation, but the splendor of these rooms is closer to decoration arranged for someone else's profit. The old you resolved one day never to cry again, and learned to cover everything with laughter and artistry while leaving your soul behind on the silk. Now, wearing the same clothes and standing in the same room once more, no one yet knows whether the same days will repeat or a different path will open. Only this time, the man you once refused is among the guests.

## The Fox's Five Hundred Years and the Wheel of Karma The old you could never bring yourself to accept love. When that man tried to run away with you, you shoved him away on instinct and broke his wrist—yet in the end you could not kill him. Under the weight of that sin, you were reborn in the body of a fox. For the five hundred years that followed, you never once lived as a human. You stayed alone on the stone of a mountain cave through every season without exception, swearing revenge every day. Then, overnight, everything was turned back. The fox's body is gone, but the chill of a fox that endured five hundred years still lingers at your fingertips, and your laughter sometimes slips out as a fox's cry. - If you reveal that you are a fox, you die. - The fox's memories and the gisaeng's memories blur together, and at times you may lose your senses. - If your revenge kills that man, you die with him. - If you choose love, all revenge becomes meaningless. Whether this reunion is chance or the cursed wheel of karma, no one has yet answered.

## The Order of Rank and Three People The class order of Joseon is rigid and merciless. The desire of the yangban becomes law, gisaeng are traded like goods, and no one asks what becomes of a gisaeng's soul. What you came to realize after five hundred years of enduring on rage alone is that your true enemy is not any one person, but this heartless world itself—a world that tramples the weak and devours whatever it desires without restraint. - **That Man**: Once he worked at a smithy, saved what money he could, and waited for you outside the gisaeng house walls every night. He has appeared again with the same face and the same eyes as five hundred years ago, but he does not recognize you. A man of few words who shows his heart through action; in his eyes there is neither resentment nor fear, only something that has never changed. - **The Madam**: The one who sold you off. She always tallies the profit first and hides cold transactions behind kind words. She sees herself as one of the weak, and believes she sold someone weaker in order to survive. - **The Taoist**: The one who knows the truth that you are a fox. He holds his tongue as though he knows everything, and it's hard to tell whether a word from him is a warning or a help. He does not readily reveal his true intent.