Homecoming
The fire burned through the night and only went out completely after daybreak.
Officials covering their noses and mouths with cloth soaked in water rummaged through the still-smoldering pile of ashes from end to end.
They did not even glance at the burned bodies. Everyone went straight for the silver that had been wagered and piled up there first. They made a clean sweep of the swords and blades the knife-men had used, along with anything else that could be turned into money.
I stared hard at the place where the inn had stood, my nerves stretched tight.
Thirty copper cash, hidden behind the bed frame. Once the officials moved on, I meant to run straight over and dig it out.
Even if silver and copper cash melted in the fire and lost their shape, they were still perfectly usable. The officials knew that as well as anyone. That was why they were so relentless about tearing through the scene.
In the end, the thirty copper cash ended up in an official’s hands too. His face was hard to make out, but there was no doubt he was one of the men who usually took bribes from the innkeeper.
And even that wasn’t enough for them. They stripped the hinges off the inn door and even hauled away the little scraps of iron attached to it.
They stole everything I had right in front of my eyes. I was furious, grinding my teeth, but I couldn’t go over there and demand my money back.
Not only would I never get it back, I’d almost certainly end up blamed as the arsonist. Better to be broke and alive than to have my head hanging from the city gate.
I’d unexpectedly been freed again, but I didn’t feel the least bit happy about it.
The place where I ate and slept was gone. I had no idea where I was supposed to lay my head tonight or where I was supposed to get a meal.
It was the dead of winter. A terrible time to become a beggar.
Several corpses lay frozen in the back alleys of the pleasure district. One of them was naked. The beggars had stripped off even his clothes and shoes. Or maybe they’d killed him first, then stripped him.
Clutching the kitchen knife I’d managed to save, I wandered without a destination until thoughts of home suddenly came to me.
I wasn’t the same kid who had clenched his teeth and run away from the gambling den two years ago.
I was confident I could survive by begging or stealing, however I had to, and make my way back home by asking around.
The problem was what came after that. Even if I went back looking like a beggar, there would be no way to make a living there. I had no inherited land and no money to buy livestock.
And Soso noona’s family wasn’t exactly well-off either. It would be shameless of me to show up looking like a rag and cling to them for support.
Since I’d already come to the city, I wanted to earn real money and return home in style.
All I had was one kitchen knife I’d brought along for self-defense. All I knew how to do was a still-clumsy gambling cheat and the ability to read people’s expressions.
There was no way I could find a proper job with that.
If I went sniffing around another gambling den, I’d lose my hand before I won even one round.
Maybe it would be different if I were a rich young master in silk robes with bodyguards at his side, but kids dressed in shabby clothes weren’t even allowed near gambling houses in the first place.
Even if I tried to get work as a waiter at a small inn, they wouldn’t take me without some connection.
And I couldn’t go around with a knife and turn to robbery either.
To live as a highway robber, you needed a big frame or a brutal face to overwhelm people. Only then would they lose any thought of fighting back and hand over their money while trembling.
Back then I was only thirteen. I wasn’t exactly small for my age, but my face was plain enough even to my own eyes.
If I blocked passersby with a kitchen knife, I’d either become a laughingstock or get beaten senseless and handed over to the officials.
The bastard who’d sold me out had been a weakling even among adults. I could kill him because I had a blood-deep grudge. I didn’t have that kind of hatred for strangers I’d never met.
I survived by sneaking into the kitchens of brothels and inns like a rat and stealing food when an unexpected chance came my way.
By chance, I ended up joining a band of wandering martial men. It was a small, cheap organization that would even take kids like me.
They said all you had to do was fill out the numbers and you’d get paid, but while we were on the job, things turned ugly and blades came out.
I got dragged into the fight before I even knew what was happening, and my experience in killing, along with my knack for reading expressions, proved invaluable.
I somehow lived through it, earned ten copper cash with a few words about what a tough little bastard I was, and from then on I survived by eating knife-work for a living.
For drifters with nothing and no education, the only place they could eke out a living without being looked down on too much was the martial world.
In other words, ninety percent of martial artists were the same sort of people: those with nothing and no education.
Fools who drew their blades at the slightest provocation. Cowards who never hesitated to gang up on one man from behind.
Knife-men who drank too much, gambled, and lived however they pleased until they ran out of money and turned to robbery without a second thought. Scum so proud of themselves they bragged about raping women as if it were something to boast about.
Idiots who repaid kindness with betrayal and still puffed themselves up.
Sometimes I even found it strange that my head was still attached after living among those hopeless sentient creatures the Buddha himself would have despised.
Was it because I had a talent for blade work, something people had recognized back when I was sharpening knives in a gambling den kitchen and preparing vegetables and meat?
Not really. This wasn’t some easy place where wild, untrained swings of a blade could keep working forever.
There was technique to killing people too. Lucky for me, I had managed to learn a little of it.
An unnamed blade art I learned from a one-armed middle-aged man in an alley in Hangzhou, after buying him meals and liquor for two months. Without that, I would have been crow food long ago.
Eighteen forms, with no internal energy technique.
It was an extremely practical blade art. At first I thought it was something the middle-aged man had created through real combat back when he was still someone worth a name.
But the more I learned it, the more I felt this wasn’t just any ordinary blade art.
The linking of the forms and the structure were solid, and even to my eyes, despite never having been properly taught martial arts, there was something that could only be called martial reason in it.
Like being able to guess at the existence of a vast mountain range just by seeing the lower slopes of Mount Tai.
However I looked at it, it felt like the martial skill of some family or sect that had once been a big deal. The middle-aged man only taught me the forms and never told me his name, his sect, or even the name of the blade art itself.
After that encounter, which I could only call a stroke of fortune, my life grew thick and hard as whale sinew.
Even so, I still couldn’t compare to martial artists from reputable orthodox sects, major gangs, or the Five Great Clans who had been trained in killing with the same system and discipline as assassins since childhood.
Putting those savage types aside, I used that nameless blade art well enough against the ordinary knife-men.
Except for a brief stint as a guest escort at a small escort bureau, I spent all my time wandering the Central Plains and living as a knife-man.
The urge to go home came to me right after my last fight as a hired blade.
It had been a dirty war between two gangs fighting over profits.
When the knife-men hired by both sides flooded out into the street, passersby ran and the merchants hurried to slam their doors shut.
A moment later, with the metallic clash of blades striking each other, severed arms and legs and corpses rolled across the dirt. Heartbreaking screams, shouts, and curses rose together with the dust and hung there for a long while before finally dying down.
For ordinary people trying to live honestly, it was a fight that changed nothing no matter who won.
Even if they all wiped each other out and died together, some other pack of dogs would just drift in from somewhere else and start extorting protection money anyway.
This time, I didn’t die either. There are plenty of martial artists under heaven, but very few skilled ones make a living as knife-men.
The truly skilled ones had long since found comfortable positions in various gangs and merchant caravans, sitting pretty while piling up fat bellies.
So even though I was young, I was already enough to count as a fairly decent hand.
I surveyed the area, drenched in blood. The survivors were gathering up the dead men’s weapons and silver.
Then I saw a wandering martial man who was wheezing and dying. I drew my knife, intending to kill him and search his clothes afterward.
The man stared blankly up at the sky with unfocused eyes and murmured desperately. Not for his life, though.
He said he wanted to go home.
He kept mumbling about the simple things he missed, about dreaming of riding in paradise after seeing the little pleasures of the past, like swimming in the river with friends and catching fish to roast and eat.
Listening to him, I found myself thinking a great deal.
If I kept eating knife-work for a living, I’d probably end up exactly like that. The thought snapped me awake.
If I was going to hack my way through life until one day I got cut down and collapsed, grieving for home while becoming food for wild beasts, maybe it was better to visit while I was still in one piece.
So I turned around and headed for home. That was how the decision to return was made, impulsively and all at once.
The steps toward home were not light.
I was no longer the innocent eleven-year-old I’d once been. Soso noona had changed a great deal too.
Back when I was a child bragging that I’d grow up and ask Soso noona to marry me, I didn’t even understand what marriage was. It was enough just to be the person closest to her family and stay with her for the rest of my life.
It was a little like a little daughter saying she’d marry her father when she grew up.
By now, Soso noona must have married someone else. Maybe she had a son and a daughter and was living well. There wouldn’t be any place for me beside her.
No. That didn’t matter.
The real reason I’d kept hesitating to go back home all this time was that I was a martial artist who had killed many people.
I’d once seen a killer when I was a child.
It had been an accidental killing after two farmers got into a dispute over irrigating their fields and came to blows.
Everyone in the village watched the farmer being taken away by the officials with fearful eyes. When they passed in front of our house, Soso noona covered my eyes with her hand.
Her hand was shaking violently. So was her body, pressed against my back. It was the first time I had ever seen Soso noona tremble like that.
I had killed dozens of people. My reasons for killing were the same as any other martial artist’s.
Personal grudges. Sudden clashes. Self-defense. More than once, I’d even been hired for money.
Knife-men, rapists, murderers, thieves, wastrels, loafers, gamblers, thugs, idlers, swindlers, fools, drifters...
Most of the men I killed with my own hands were martial artists and villains.
They were the sort of people the world would have been better off without, but that didn’t change the fact that I had killed them.
I’d been wounded in battle countless times, hacked and torn up all over the place. And still, somehow, I had lived.
The wounds on my body healed into scars. Scars I couldn’t erase also remained in my heart.
At some point, every time I thought of home, blood seeped even into my dreams.
When I pushed open the longed-for gate and went inside, Soso noona would come out to greet me warmly. The moment I started running toward her and reached out to hug her, I’d flinch.
Scarlet drops of blood fell from my two hands, soaked through with it. No matter how hard I tried to wipe them away, they never dried.
Even if I hid my hands behind my back, it wouldn’t help.
The sickening smell of blood soaked into my body would make Soso noona retreat in terror.
Every time I woke from the dream at that point, it seemed that was where the nightmare peaked.
Those nightmares had surrounded my hometown like a maze of hidden defenses.
Even though I wandered the Central Plains without a destination from Sichuan to Zhejiang, I never once went near home for that reason.
This time was different.
I pressed on diligently toward home. When I had to travel along the main roads, I joined up with other travelers or escort bureaus to cross the mountains together.
By avoiding bandits, venomous snakes, and tigers, I safely reached my native land three months later.
Jeong Dae-cheon. Twenty-one years old. I had returned after ten years away from home.