There Are No Excuses in My Life (6)
Of all the enemy nations that had gone to war with Pendragon, not one was ignorant of the name Tristan.
Did they remember Tristan for the Scarlet Eagle, that order of a hundred mighty knights?
No.
Because it was a house of tradition, unbroken across hundreds of years?
That was not it either.
It was only this.
Tristan's archers.
Whenever the successive heads of the house took the field—men called master archers and Divine Bows, and sometimes the Magic-Bullet Sniper—they piled up feats of arms that overwhelmed even knightly orders as a matter of course.
The enemy commander always died to a Tristan arrow, and he could never so much as dodge it. Magic raised in defense did not save him. Soldiers at his side and a shield in his hand did not save him. However far he fled, it was the same.
They tried everything. Tristan's arrows mocked every effort, and in the end they pierced the skulls of commanders and enemy generals with perfect aim.
And so someone would say it. The heads of Tristan must all possess a Mystery. Master the Fighting Art as thoroughly as you like; without a Mystery, it was absurd to display archery like some divine art.
But whenever the successive lords of Tristan heard talk like that, they only smiled in scorn.
Tristan's claim was this. Train systematically from childhood, until the five senses can catch even the sound of a blade of grass falling far away. Loose thousands of arrows in a day—tens of thousands—and keep at the work, and anyone can become a master marksman.
Yes. With effort, and a little talent, anyone could learn a feat on the order of a Mystery.
Only—
They had spoken nothing but the truth, and they merely shrugged, a little sorry that no one believed them.
And yet...
...How in the world is a thing like that even possible?
Was this what Tristan's enemies had always felt, facing that bow?
Jenimia blinked at the knight who had stopped his bullet by some uncanny—no, grotesque—means, and the question left him before he knew he was asking it.
"How are you doing that?"
"Put in the work."
"...I don't think work is going to cover it."
The man had stopped it with his teeth. More precisely, with the strength of his mouth.
Bite force. Nothing but the power of a bite, and he had caught the shot dead-on. Jenimia could only stare, stunned, and the other man said:
"It isn't that effort can't do it. You just haven't put in enough."
"......"
Hearing, from someone else, the very line he was always handing to other people left Jenimia in a strangely complicated mood.
Holy shit. I actually caught that. Barely...!
His gums throbbed.
He had put on a brave face in front of the marquis, but the truth was that Lee Han had never meant to stop that shot with his teeth. He had meant to dodge, or to block with the hand axe, and he had simply missed the moment to slip it or knock it aside.
No sound. Nothing exists but the instant the shot is loosed.
It could not even be called an arrow. There was no sound—only the act of release. He had blocked it by luck alone, on the razor edge of a sense for danger. Had he failed, the end waiting for him would have been very ugly.
This is insane. Why is every great noble in this country a monster?
The grand duke and the duke from the day before had been the same. The great nobles were worse than the knights, and every last one of them was the sort of opponent who could send you to your grave if you slipped. Damn it all.
Hoo...!
Cold sweat was soaking his back, and Lee Han had no time to let it cool. He forced the tension out of his body anyway. He had to. Let his muscles lock for even a moment—
Paang!
Paaaang!
Pung—!!
—and he would be hit before he could so much as dodge.
The marquis's shot cracked toward him again.
"You dodged that one!"
"Quit using people as test subjects!"
The old man was having the time of his life. Whatever wonder he found in the trick of catching a shot in the mouth, he drew without a breath of rest, and every release—too fast for the eye to follow—poured down on Lee Han.
Wasn't it said the hand is faster than the eye? He thought he understood why the saying existed. The man's rate of fire was quicker than loading a gun.
It was a horn bow larger than the average woman's height. Watching him handle a weapon like that as if it were a toy, Lee Han was certain that in draw-weight alone the marquis was no less than he was. How did a body that slender put out force like that? It hardly seemed possible.
Puuuong!!
"!!?"
"Hit you at last. But how in the world did you forge that body? Ordinarily I'd break the bone.... Am I getting old?"
"...No. You're disgustingly healthy."
Diamond Body
He had unfolded Diamond Body only just in time. Had he not spread it out of habit, his skin would surely have split, or a bone cracked.
A frightening man.
But there was one encouraging fact.
My reactions are keeping up.
He was dodging, and answering, an archery that bordered on divine technique—no, that did not fall short of Mystery or magic. After dozens of shots in a chain, there came a moment when he could block, slip aside, or knock them away. His reaction speed was finally rising.
Which meant that a counter against the marquis was now—
He froze.
"Remarkable. Your whole body is in tatters, and yet through senses beyond the ordinary, and some curious technique, you are answering mine. At my age I had flattered myself that I had seen every Mystery and every art worth seeing. It seems I was still a greenhorn. Ha ha!"
"......"
Lee Han chose not to counter. He fell back, and stole a moment to drag in a breath. He didn't know why. Only the certainty that if he closed another step, his life would be cut short.
"Good instincts. Yes. One mustn't rejoice merely for having beaten a parlor trick like this."
"Then how about you tell me how many parlor tricks you've got left."
"Regrettably, that was the last of them. So let us be serious now."
"......"
Shaaaa!
A vortex—no, every current around them—drew in upon the marquis as if gathering to a single will. Air and wind were sucked inward until they formed the eye of a small typhoon.
Kwaaak!
Afraid he himself would be pulled in, Lee Han drove his feet into the earth with everything he had and endured the flow the marquis was putting out.
Shit! Is that thing even human?!
He was aware he had no right to say it, but looking at the man dragged a groan out of him all the same.
Attraction. With that small body, the marquis was generating a pull. It was no trick a mere human ought to show, and the fact that it was neither magic nor Mystery only made it more appalling.
And then he understood.
That man is a superhuman short by exactly one step!
A Superhuman. A calamity in the shape of a man: an Aura User. Someone who had walked all the way to the threshold of that realm. He had failed to climb only because a single step was missing, because some condition had not been met. The marquis truly stood just before it.
A hollow laugh escaped Lee Han.
His body was already in shreds, and he had no idea when his stamina would hit its limit. Even in perfect condition he could not have said whether he would win, and he had to fight a man like that. It was despair. To throw himself at that now was no different from suicide—
Kwaang!
"......"
"Hm. When I bring this technique out, the reaction is one of two things. Either they go mad with terror and beg me to spare them, or they run."
"Smart of them. I want to run right now."
"Ha ha. And yet here you stand, not running."
"...Already regretting it."
Lee Han stamped the despair seeping into him out of his body in a single beat, and set himself in a stance ready to charge.
The marquis's eyes lit. He had seen the will to fight turning in Lee Han's gaze.
"You may concede defeat. There is no shame in fearing the strong, nor in declaring your loss. What matters is surviving."
"I know. My whole principle is to live long, and happily."
"Then why go so far?"
"...Because I don't want an excuse."
"......"
Was it because his body was in poor shape? Or because he stood before a monster weathered across fifty years, a man who could have let words like his blow past without a thought? Whatever the reason, he gave voice to the honesty that had piled up inside him.
"I already lived a life that was nothing but excuses. Couldn't, because of this. Couldn't, because of that. This was reality, so I lived by giving up. I lived making excuses. Always."
Wooong!
"But a new chance came to a worthless bastard like that, and I promised I'd live without excuses anymore. That I'd live a life with no regrets!"
Yes. He was a man who wanted to quit the knight order this very day and retire. He wanted a quiet, contented life, with one cute dog and one cat. Power, honor, even knighthood—none of it meant much to him. Even if someone called him a fool, he wanted a good life, different from the last one.
But even so!
One life lived as a coward, making excuses, is enough.
He wanted to live happily. He did not want to live as a coward. If he was only going to repeat the past—repeat his previous life—then what meaning did the miracle of reincarnation have?
"I didn't build my strength so I could bow my head to other people, look away while my own suffered, and live with my chest stopped up!"
Lee Han shouted with everything he had, and carved the resolve in again.
He would live happily. But he would not live as a coward while he did it.
And so he had fought. He had fought a mage. He had fought a troll that had lived a thousand years. Now he fought a marquis.
And—
Hwaaaak!
A flower bloomed. A plum blossom. Not a blossom opening from the only hand axe in his grip.
Petals of plum blossom, opened from his momentum, with the blood he shed as offering.
Plum blossoms in full bloom.
Lee Han's petals covered the sky over the marquis's house.
"...Strong. Truly strong! It has been a very long time since I met a man this strong!"
In all his life, Jenimia had never praised another person like this. He was not offering the praise to the beautiful plum blossoms. It was the resolve the man had spoken. That resolve was more than enough to call praise forth.
People say they are doing their best. But was there truly anyone who lived a single day as if it were a whole life? Even that late king had not lived so.
"One shot. Stop this one shot, and I will acknowledge my defeat."
"......"
"I am not looking down on you. An archer, you see—"
An archer settled the match in a single shot. That was simply how it was.
Kwaaaaa!!
With a sound like the air itself tearing, the marquis let the string go.
Bbb-drrrk!
"Krgh—!"
Lee Han swallowed a groan under a blow that seemed intent on ripping his whole body apart. A vast pressure came down, swallowing even wind and sound. The plum blossoms in full bloom were barely holding, but they would be pierced before long.
Before a current too great to resist, he felt like an insect being crushed beneath a giant. Merely to be touched was to die. He had already spent the last of his stamina blooming the plum blossoms. His vision blurred. His consciousness felt ready to go out at any moment.
...Am I dying?
Lee Han thought of his own death. Was this it? The moment he truly felt his limit?
Not yet.
Not yet!
He had made a promise. That he would return before it was too late. Then he had to go back alive. That guileless maid would wait in that very spot, however long it took, until he came.
So.
I have to go back!
Chwak!
...Thud.
Lee Han moved on reflex. The most natural motion his body remembered.
Sssk.
He closed his fist. He bent his waist slightly, and set his left foot forward.
Hundred-Pace Divine Fist?
That wasn't it. The principle was similar, but if he had to find an example for the fist art he was about to use—
"How do you even do something like that?"
"Read the grain of the wind, and anyone can manage it simply enough. Those spell-slingers are fond of the trick."
"...First I've heard you can use magic without a spell."
"The martial world has no end. Keep at the work, and a spell-slinger's methods become simple enough."
"Sounds like bullshit to me."
Ah.
He remembered. Before he had been posted, of all things, as an instructor—when he had sparred with that man. The man had shown him a wonder: seeing the grain of the wind, and cutting it. At the time Lee Han had wondered how.
That one didn't take much strength at all, did it?
It hadn't needed great force. The man had swung his sword with an astonishingly light hand, and he had flicked aside even a full-power body blow as if it were nothing.
And now Lee Han reached for the technique he had seen then.
Was it like this?
Not a scrap of stamina remained in him. He was in tatters, and because of that, he thought he might be able to follow it.
Hwaaak!
Light, and yet heavy. Heavy, and yet free—and reverent besides. Yes. Like the merciful fist of a buddha.
Arhat...
Light, yet heavy. Heavy, yet free and reverent. The merciful fist of a buddha.
The name seemed to suit it well.
Paaaat—!
The maid was still dozing, propped against the tree.
She might have gone inside and slept in the house. She showed no mind to. She simply kept her place in silence, and around her the squirrels and sparrows gathered. Deer appeared, and wolves as well. Predator and prey had come together, and yet for some reason they neither fled nor tried to eat one another. They only guarded the dozing maid.
It was a wondrous sight. Like a scene out of a fairy tale.
But unlike a fairy tale, the one the maid under the animals' protection was waiting for was not a prince who would dress her in a splendid gown and set a crown upon her head.
What the maid—Layla Winter—was waiting for...
Her ears perked.
"...I'm late."
"...Hehe. You're here."
A rough man, but a warm one, who knew how to keep a promise.
As if she had never been nodding off at all, Layla Winter welcomed him with a sunlit smile. He was a wreck. He had come home with bandages wrapped hastily here and there. Toward the man who had truly given everything he had today, Layla said:
"You worked hard."
"......"
As always, she only smiled, and held him.
"...I'm filthy, though."
"Then you can wash."
"...Honestly."
The man smiled bitterly. Layla smiled with her eyes, as if she were simply glad he had kept his promise.
Whooong.
"...That temperament of his."
Dawn was breaking. Jenimia looked up into the dim sky and shook his head.
"...He might at least have gotten properly treated before he left."
He was sorry for it. He had wanted a cup of tea and a conversation, and the man had gone without a backward feeling. Jenimia gazed at the place he had left and chewed on the regret.
And then—
"...So Sir Baltar found an interesting one. Ha ha."
That last blow. The blow had clearly been his. But it was not entirely the same. There was an honest flavor to it, as of something taken in while being struck, and made one's own.
He still won't raise a disciple, but he doesn't stop anyone from learning on their own. Peculiar men, finding each other.
Soon he laughed, brightly, and as purely as a child.
He had thought that, like himself, all desire had left the man after the late king's death. Looking now, though—
"So you were having all the fun alone."
He rubbed his abdomen. It didn't hurt. There wasn't a single wound. And yet—
"Heavy."
A heavy force remained in his belly. A will.
"Ahahaha!!"
It had been a truly long time since he had felt so clear, and he laughed, open and loud. And he thought it: clearer than the cool air of dawn—clear enough to be exhilarating.
What a worthwhile defeat this was.