The Herbalist
The Herbalist’s shop was the true heart of the West Asia neighborhood in Crossroads. The glowing from the red papers lanterns caught the corner of the average shopper’s eye as they walked amongst the small stores and restaurants in the neighborhood that had been a prominent fixture in the city ever since its birth as a hub for railroad and river traffic in the American south. When the shop had been originally created it had faced a street, open to the public and in plain sight. Since then the traffic patterns of the city had changed, and a building had been added to the corner of the new street, turning the road leading into the Herbalist’s shop into an alley rather than a thoroughfare.
What would have normally felt ominously unsafe with its darkness overshadowed by the buildings on either side was made an alluring mystery by the light of the paper lantern above the ornate and well cared for shop door. Where there had once been a window was bricked over, the outside light shut away in an effort to help preserve the secrets of the goods and services within.
Many things were whispered about the Herbalist who owned the shop, both to her face and behind her back.
Her seeming inability to age was spoken of in whispers by the ancient grandmothers who remembered the days when the wrinkles did not cause their own faces to droop, back to a time where the Herbalist looked the exact same as she did now - forever close to middle aged without a single wrinkle or blemish upon her porcelain skin.
Her beauty was the topic of whispered discussions held between middle aged men old enough to remember to go to the Herbalist for their bedroom troubles rather than an American doctor that peddled pills they did not trust even as their white co-workers downed them like the breath mints they so desperately needed.
The veteran members of the criminal element spoke of her with both reverence and fear, having often seen her machinations result in the use of her abilities to take care of problems within the neighborhood. The younger criminal element regarded the Herbalist with a disdain often warned against by their betters for they too had once been so ignorant of the Herbalist’s powers, and had been shown time and again that it was not wise to cross the shopkeeper.
The sex workers spoke of her fondly in public, but in private they all had chilling tales to tell of how they or someone they knew had seen displays of her legendary temper. All of the call girls knew they could turn to Ms. Han for the ills gained in their line of work, even for help when they needed it most, and for that they trusted her above all others. Some of them would even tell stories late at night about how they had learned a thing or two from the Herbalist, their cheeks flushed with the memory of silken sheets and cries of pleasure made late in the night.
For most residents of the neighborhood she was simply the Herbalist who played Baduk with Mr. Kim and carried items the traditionalists insisted that they needed. They thought she must have inherited the shop from her grandmother or had brought items over with her when she immigrated to the United States and then started a business of her own. This belief still persisted despite the old people’s insistence that she had been the one running the shop even back when they were young. That was simply too unbelievable for the “sensible” people of the neighborhood to swallow.
There were a few things that people could all agree upon though… Ms. Han was a formidable woman with deep connections in the neighborhood, her cures always worked, and that you should never come to ask her for a favor with empty hands. After all, nothing in this world is free and Ms. Han ran a business… not a charity.
