Gu-sam the Waiter
The Poongcheon Inn, where I had stayed for two days after returning to my hometown, was where I met a fairly sharp-looking waiter named Gu-sam.
It was a strange name. He was a person, not a cow or a dog, so why would anyone call him the “third mouth to eat”?
It made me wonder if his parents had gone too far, but poor families were like that more often than not. When children kept coming one after another, worry usually arrived before joy.
You worked your bones to the marrow in the fields, then lived off the grain harvested in autumn until early summer of the following year, when the barley ripened again.
Getting through the dead of winter, when everything froze solid, was especially miserable.
If only humans could hibernate like snakes or bears. But since a person had to eat at least once a day to stay alive, when food ran short, the first thing to go was one of the mouths at the table.
It must have been some pitiful winter day like that when Gu-sam was abandoned in front of the Poongcheon Inn.
Gu-sam could barely remember his own name, and he didn’t know the faces of his parents at all.
Surprisingly, the innkeeper hadn’t driven him away but had taken him in and raised him. He was the sort of rare good-hearted person you didn’t meet easily, whether back then or now.
How was I supposed to know the petty details of a waiter’s life when he had nothing to do with me?
Even if I had wanted not to know, I couldn’t have helped it. The bastard came to me every day and chattered away endlessly.
“Waaah, sir hero. Do you really live here? The atmosphere’s creepy. Does a ghost come out at night or something...”
“Get lost.”
“Hehe. You must be hungry, right? I brought some food.”
Whenever I got annoyed and tried to glare him away, Gu-sam would quickly thrust a wrapped bundle at me.
“It’s still before dinner, isn’t it?”
I was hungry. I needed to eat something, but I’d been chewing on my remaining dried ration and jerky because I didn’t feel like going all the way to the inn.
If I ate this too, I wouldn’t be able to toss him out coldly. But it also wasn’t right to ignore the trouble he’d gone through to bring me food.
While I was wavering between the irritation of dealing with an unwanted guest and the annoyance of not wanting to step outside, Gu-sam slipped into the room in a hurry.
By the time I followed, he had already spread the food out across the table.
There was white rice, a vegetable stir-fry with shredded chicken, dumplings, and even tea water carried in a bamboo tube.
Without a word, I took ten coins from my purse and set them down.
“You don’t have to pay me.”
“Take it. Let’s call it a delivery fee. Keep sneaking food around like that and you’ll get beaten.”
“Our owner doesn’t hit people much.”
“Then you’d better work even harder.”
Free food was one thing, but only up to a point. Sooner or later, he’d get caught.
And if he got the wrong idea that I had threatened him into bringing it, I might end up losing a few taels of silver.
It was easier to pretend it had been delivered.
As I’d learned in life, it wasn’t only bad people who put me in danger. Sometimes the kindness of the powerless was more dangerous than the greed of the powerful.
“Have you seen the people who used to live here?”
“No. This place is a complete ruin, so I never went anywhere near it.”
It annoyed me that he kept calling my home a ruin, a place full of memories. My tone grew a little sharper.
“Then you can leave the inn empty?”
“Hehe, I cleaned everything up and even finished preparing the ingredients. There’s still some time before dinner service starts.”
Why did this kid keep running over to find me so often? He never said it outright, but from the way his eyes shone with admiration, I could guess well enough.
As I ate in silence, Gu-sam finally grew restless and glanced at me before speaking.
“Sir hero, you’re a martial artist too, right?”
“What’s a martial artist?”
That was an essential question, and Gu-sam blinked at me stupidly.
“Well... someone who carries a sword?”
“Government soldiers carry swords too. Are they martial artists?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then bandits?”
“Definitely not.”
Gu-sam shook his head hard.
“You knocked those thugs flat with one blow before, didn’t you? Could you teach me that, just a little? Hehe.”
“There’s a butcher shop in this town, right?”
“Yes. There is.”
“Go there.”
“Should I bring back some meat?”
“No. Go there and learn.”
“Learn what?”
“How to cut.”
Gu-sam tilted his head, confused.
“A butcher and a martial artist are the same. The only difference is that butchers kill beasts, while martial artists kill people. Hm. No, that’s not quite right.”
After saying it, I realized that was a bit unfair.
“Really? It’s not?”
“There are plenty of people worse than beasts, so maybe butchers are the better sort. Which means martial artists are worse than butchers.”
“Come on, that’s ridiculous. Sir hero, you’re a true chivalrous knight.”
A chivalrous knight, huh...
I stopped using my chopsticks and looked up. Seeing the bright, sparkling look in Gu-sam’s eyes made my mouth taste bitter for some reason.
If he had seen me drenched in blood, swinging a blade like some murderous fiend, he would never have said that.
“Whether they call themselves chivalrous knights or whatever, the ones who wear swords at their waist usually end up dying under someone else’s blade.”
“So you’re saying live long and thin?”
“You’re not stupid.”
“I hear that a lot. But isn’t it better to live thick and long? Doctor Sang says thick stools are a lot better than thin ones. If the stool gets too thin, old waste builds up in the intestines and poisons you because...”
“If you keep shitting thick turds, your ass could split...”
As I was picking up a dumpling, I trailed off with a start.
We were in the middle of eating, and here we were talking about shit. How had the conversation gotten this filthy...
Frowning, I put the dumpling in my mouth.
“If you become only halfway strong, you just get hit more.”
“Yes. That does seem to be how it goes.”
Gu-sam scratched his head and sighed. As I chewed, I studied his face.
There was a fresh bruise under his left eye that hadn’t been there yesterday. His cheek looked a little swollen too.
“How old are you?”
“Me? Probably around twelve. I’m not exactly sure.”
I killed a man for the first time when I was twelve.
The human trash who had ruined my life, the fake relative.
It wouldn’t have surprised me if Gu-sam had a grudge that deep against someone too. Grudges didn’t care about age or status.
The inn got its fair share of thugs and martial artists, too. Living as a powerless waiter, he must have endured plenty of humiliations.
“Is there someone you want dead?”
When I asked seriously, Gu-sam’s eyes widened in alarm.
“No. Why would I want to kill someone?”
“Then what?”
“There’s the eldest son of the fabric shop, a guy named Bang Ho-jin. He’s my age, and that bastard runs the alleys in this district...”
As if he had been waiting for someone to ask, Gu-sam heated up at once and poured out the whole story in great detail.
He sounded serious and dramatic enough, but if I had to sum it up in a single line, it was just children fighting.
I almost laughed, but it wasn’t something to dismiss. A child’s world could be just as brutal as an adult’s.
You might think a small hand and foot that weren’t even fully grown couldn’t hurt much, but in the Black Way there were people who shoved blades into children’s hands and used them as assassins.
I’d seen more than a few who had underestimated children and ended up dead for it. The fake relative I had killed with my own hands had been one of them.
As for ordinary neighborhood kids like these, all they usually had was clumsy, ugly fistfights. Get hit once, and most of them would crumple in pain and terror and burst into tears.
But if you had even a little courage and grit, enough to get back up after being hit and throw yourself at your opponent again like a drowning ghost dragging someone down with it, then at the very least you wouldn’t get walked over.
“I tried. More times than I can count, but it doesn’t work.”
He said he had fought a total of twelve times and lost eleven of them. Even after that, he was still thinking about fighting again. Gu-sam was more impressive than he looked.
“So you won once?”
“It was a draw...”
He looked embarrassed and scratched his head. “I was getting beaten up for a long time, I mean, we were still fighting, and then the second son from the fabric shop came running over and said, ‘If you don’t come eat right now, Mom says she’s going to beat your ass with a broom until it catches fire.’ So technically it was a draw, but somehow it still felt like I lost.”
Gu-sam’s swollen, bruised face fell into a sulk.
He didn’t want to become a martial artist. He didn’t dream of becoming some thug or ruffian who wore a sword on his hip and ran wild.
He didn’t even dream of becoming an unmatched master or the greatest person under heaven.
He wasn’t trying to beat the fabric shop’s son and become the new alley boss, ruling over the streets of Seochon.
All he wanted was to stop being looked down on as an orphan without parents, mocked as a waiter, and bullied by other children.
To do that, he had to defeat Bang Ho-jin, the eldest son of the fabric shop, the current boss of the neighborhood alleys, in front of the other children.
Judging by his record so far, that was impossible with his own strength alone. Unless some lucky encounter dropped out of the sky, all the fighting in the world would only add to his losses.
After slowly finishing the food and rinsing my mouth with cold tea, I stood up.
“Follow me.”
I went outside and stood facing Gu-sam in the middle of the courtyard.
After clearing away all the junk and finishing the weeding, the yard was wide and clean enough to put many training grounds to shame.
“Do you normally train anything?”
“Of course. Do you want to see?”
“Show me.”
Gu-sam planted both fists at his waist with confidence and spread his feet shoulder-width apart. Then he bent his knees halfway and settled into a stiff stance, holding himself there.
“What are you doing?”
He looked at me as if to say I should already know.
“It’s horse stance, isn’t it? They say it’s the best thing for training the lower body and building fundamentals.”
“Who says?”
“A guest who stayed at the inn before...”
He blinked. “Is that bad?”
“It’s useful if you’re being punished. Never stand that stupidly in a real fight. You have to keep moving, endlessly moving, so your opponent’s attack misses. If you want to train your legs, climbing mountains is better. It builds leg strength and makes your body more agile. Straighten your posture and take one step forward with only your left foot.”
Only then, as if he had finally understood after moving thoughtlessly until now, Gu-sam looked up at me.
“Wait, are you teaching me martial arts? Oh, Master, let me bow fir...”
“Stop.”
I cut off his attempt to sneak in a bow.
“Do you even know what it means to become master and disciple?”
“Well... it means carrying on the line of martial arts, doesn’t it?”
“Again?”
I stared straight at Gu-sam, who was looking at me blankly, and made it perfectly clear how heavy and dangerous that really was.
“I have plenty of men who bear a grudge against me. If they come looking for revenge and I have a disciple, they’ll try to kill the disciple too. They might even hire assassins or sword-for-hire men. To become someone’s disciple means inheriting not just their martial arts, but also the debts and grudges they carry. Can you bear that?”
“I-is that so?”
Gu-sam’s face darkened fast in alarm.
No matter how badly he wanted to win, even a child like him could tell it was absurd to inherit a vengeance washed in blood.
“Then that won’t do...”
Disappointment sank his head and drooped his shoulders.
“Instead of martial arts, I’ll show you a few basic hand-to-hand techniques.”
“Isn’t hand-to-hand technique martial arts too?”
“Nothing that impressive. Any martial artist who’s eaten sword rice knows these moves. So don’t go around saying you learned them from me. I’m just showing you.”
“Yes! Understood!”
With Gu-sam’s eyes once again shining as he watched me intently, I gave him a light demonstration.
I stood with my feet spread shoulder-width apart. I stepped one pace forward with my left foot and naturally twisted my upper body slightly to the right.
Pushing off the ground with my back foot, I moved forward five steps. Then I pushed off again with my front foot and retreated five steps.
With my left foot, I pushed the ground sideways and moved five steps to the right. With my right foot, I did the same and moved five steps to the left. Then I returned to my original spot.
“Try it.”
Gu-sam looked bewildered.
He had expected a way to throw punches or some impressive kicking technique, but this weird thing was just walking practice. He didn’t seem to understand it at all.
Still, he said nothing and did exactly as I told him, taking up the stance and moving his feet.
He copied it easily after one look, not because he had outstanding talent, but because the footwork itself was brutally simple and clear.
After finishing the forward, back, left, and right five-step movements, Gu-sam scratched his head and asked,
“What is this?”
“Footwork.”
“Does this help in a fight?”
“It does.”
He didn’t seem convinced. Doubt crept into the bright, excited look that had been sparkling in his eyes.
“Stand in front of me.”
Gu-sam hurried over and stopped right before me.
“Punch me.”
“You, sir?”
“Then who else is in front of you besides me?”
Gu-sam looked back and forth between his fist and my face.
“Is that okay?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“What if I hit you by accident?”
The ridiculous thing made me laugh despite myself. The kid’s dreams really were big.
“That won’t happen.”
“But what if it does?”
“Even if you hit me, I won’t strike back. Start.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“...You’re serious?”
“Have you lived your whole life getting hit and nothing else?”
“...Yes.”
Gu-sam lowered his head miserably.
“If you can so much as touch me, I’ll teach you hand-to-hand technique right away.”
“Really?”
“Stop asking and move...”
Before I even finished speaking, Gu-sam threw a punch. It was an attempt to catch me off guard, but it was too slow. I shifted my upper body slightly and let the blow slide past.
“Huh?”
“What are you doing? I told you to hit me.”
“Right. Here I go!”
Gu-sam rolled up his sleeves and charged in.
I deliberately stepped back one pace, pushing off the ground with my front foot.
Since I really wasn’t counterattacking, he swung his fists with confidence.
I didn’t run far away; I simply moved with the footwork right in front of him, evading his punches.
Gu-sam strained with all his might to land a hit on me. He was desperate, but his movements were too big and too heavy, and they were easy to read.
Every time he moved, his weight pitched too far forward and his balance collapsed. He wasted too much energy just moving his body and changing direction.
After flailing uselessly like that, he quickly grew exhausted and started gasping for breath.
I remained relaxed, as if I were out for a stroll.
After a little longer, I decided that was enough and pushed off the ground with my back foot, closing the distance in an instant.
The moment my face suddenly appeared right in front of his nose, Gu-sam yelped and stumbled backward. When I followed, he bolted sideways. No matter which way he moved, I stuck to him like a shadow.
“Aaagh!”
Gu-sam turned pale as if he’d seen a ghost, panicked, and then fell flat on his back.
I brushed the dust aside with my hand, and Gu-sam’s dazed face came into view.
“Do you get it now? How important footwork is?”