Story of Martial Valor
While Gu-sam was growing stronger by the day, I hadn’t been sitting around idly either.
I stopped oversleeping and got up as soon as the sun rose, every morning without fail. After folding up my bedding, I went outside.
I loosened my body while breathing in the clear, cold air drifting down from the mountain, then picked up a water bucket and left through the gate. I went to the well, washed my face, and drew the water I’d need for the day.
A handful of dried rations and a cup of warm tea were enough to get me through breakfast, and then I started my day’s work.
I pulled weeds from here and there and tossed them over the wall, and until Gu-sam came back with my meal, I spent the whole day practicing the Nameless Saber Technique with my long saber in hand.
When I’d been making a living as a knife-man, I’d had neither the time nor the peace of mind to train in saber techniques. There hadn’t even been a proper practice yard where I could swing a blade without drawing unwanted attention.
Once I finally had the time and place, I could devote myself to training in peace for the first time since learning saber work in Hangzhou.
It was a saber technique I’d used countless times in real fights over the past three years.
I’d thought I knew it well enough to unfold it with my eyes closed, but that wasn’t true at all.
When I broke down each form one by one and examined it carefully, I realized I’d only ever been licking the surface.
The one-armed saber master I’d met in Hangzhou hadn’t taught me the whole thing. Without even a complete internal cultivation method, he’d given me only eighteen forms and called it done.
He’d said that was enough.
Well, I wasn’t his proper disciple, so it was already generous of him to teach me even the forms. It was more than enough to repay him with food and drink.
He hadn’t been wrong. Just with the saber technique I learned then, my skill had risen so much that I was treated like a first-rate knife-man wherever I went.
And the higher my price climbed, the closer every job I was hired for came to standing face-to-face with King Yama.
I’d skirted death more times than I could count.
There were times I’d run into a master a step above me and felt a chill crawl up my spine, and times I’d been surrounded by a pack of knife-men and my vision had gone dark.
Every time, I’d hurled myself forward with this Nameless Saber Technique and somehow lived.
I’d been cut, beaten, and broken all over, but I’d never suffered an injury fatal enough to kill me. I hadn’t lost a limb or been crippled either.
My face, as ordinary as it was, had also come through without any major scars.
Meeting that one-armed saber master in Hangzhou had been one of the few strokes of luck in a life otherwise ruined by bad fortune and malice.
When I finished the eighteenth and final form, satisfaction wasn’t what I felt. It was more like regret.
There’s something more here...
Still in the final stance, I thrust my long saber out and stared at the tip.
A faint, itching sensation hovered there, as if it were about to break open, as if I could almost touch it but never quite did.
Was this what experts meant when they talked about being stuck at a wall? I didn’t know. I’d seen enough people like that, but I’d never actually had the chance to talk to them.
Whether there was a higher realm of understanding waiting on the other side of the wall, or just another bastard with a blade, I wouldn’t know until I crossed it. If this really was a wall at all.
I started the saber technique from the beginning again.
Slower than usual. Slower still. I matched my breathing to the forms, drawing each breath in long and letting it out just as slowly. Then I drove forward as fast as I could.
I also tried changing the forms in every possible direction and shape.
I came back to myself when someone knocked on the gate and called out to me. It was late afternoon now, the sun already beginning to sink.
I sheathed my saber, wiped the sweat from my face, and opened the door.
Gu-sam was standing there, bowing deeply with a formal salute that didn’t suit him at all.
He’d been in another fight.
His lip was split, and his bruised face was still flushed with excitement that hadn’t quite faded. Just looking at his clothes, torn here and there and caked with dirt, I could imagine what a brutal scrap it had been.
He looked far worse than the last time he’d fought, but Gu-sam was grinning brightly, his face lit with exultation.
“I won!”
All that effort had finally borne fruit. In front of the other kids in the neighborhood, after a fierce battle, he’d at last beaten the son of the cloth shop’s family, the alley boss, to the ground.
“It’s all thanks to you, sir. Thank you again. Dinner tonight is on me.”
I hadn’t done it expecting anything like that, but I couldn’t exactly ignore his sincerity.
Humming to himself, Gu-sam came into my room and opened the food box he’d brought.
After the dumplings and egg soup, a rich chicken dish that looked mouthwatering at a glance was spread out across the table.
“I was wondering what would be best to treat you with, and I chose this.”
“Kung Pao chicken?”
“Try it. It’s not ordinary Kung Pao chicken. The innkeeper’s from Chengdu in Sichuan, so he makes it properly. I was going to choose pork, but I picked the chicken dish our inn is most confident in. Chickens are famous for repaying kindness, aren’t they?”
“...Chickens?”
I tilted my head. I’d never heard that one before.
Grinning through the scrapes on his face, Gu-sam took out a bottle of baijiu.
Even the pure white bottle looked expensive at a glance.
“How much did that cost?”
“Heh-heh. Half a tael of silver. Half a tael.”
“You didn’t steal it, did you?”
“Nope. Bought it with money I saved up. Now then, let me pour you a cup. Please accept.”
Gu-sam filled the small bamboo cup he’d prepared.
When I brought it to my nose, the scent was faint. But after one sip, the concentrated fragrance of grain burst through my mouth.
The hot liquor sliding down my throat made a sigh escape me on its own.
“Hahhh. That’s good.”
“Right? There aren’t even that many bottles left at the inn.”
While I ate, Gu-sam sat across from me and spun out the day’s victory in excruciating detail, as if he meant to take it with him to the grave.
It had been nothing more than a neighborhood kid’s fight, but from the way he told it, you’d think it was a life-and-death duel between the Demon Lord and the Alliance Chief.
He had enough talent with words that, if he grew up a little more, he could quit being a serving boy and become a professional storyteller. His tongue might have been sharper than his fists.
“Did the cloth shop’s son get badly hurt?”
Gu-sam, who had been bragging and talking with abandon, paused and grimaced.
“I beat him senseless and made his nose bleed. But that’s nothing compared to what I’ve taken until now.”
“Nothing broken?”
“I saw him go home with his little brother, crying and sniffling, and he was walking just fine. Anyway, where was I? Ah, right. I landed one punch to his lower belly and stepped in with a kick, and then this bastard...”
Gu-sam sank deeper and deeper into the story, intoxicated by the sharp thrill of release and the satisfaction of it all, adding detail after detail as he went.
It was probably the process of emotions that had been suppressed for so long finally finding their place.
I was in a good mood too, glad to see a small victory after returning home, and I let him talk without interrupting until the end.
He kept going with his tale of valor until he lost track of the time, and only after the sun had gone down did Gu-sam hurry back to the inn, saying we’d pick up the rest tomorrow.
*
The next day, rain fell from dawn. When I opened the window, a pale mist of water drifted in.
I spent the day quietly heating water for tea and enjoying the scenery softened by the drizzle.
Even by evening, when the day was fading, Gu-sam still hadn’t come. The purpose of the training had been achieved, but he’d said he’d keep delivering meals.
I figured the inn must be busy and didn’t think much of it.
I made do with some dry rations and nibbled on jerky with the remaining baijiu as an accompaniment.
The day after that, the rain came down harder. Under the overcast sky, the food still hadn’t arrived by the time dusk settled in.
Only then did a bad feeling creep over me.
Staring blankly at the emptied baijiu bottle with the paper pinwheel stuck in it, I sank into thought.
Was that what caused the trouble?
Even if the innkeeper was a generous man, half a tael of silver was too much to simply let slide. He might have decided to lay hands on Gu-sam to break him of the habit of stealing.
I fastened my long saber and took my money pouch. After checking the rain, I pulled on an old oilskin coat and put on a bamboo hat.
Then I headed for Poongcheon Inn through the rain.
Thanks to the oilskin, my body stayed dry, but the wind was strong enough that my trousers and face soon grew damp anyway.
Each time I stepped on the muddy, crumbling ground, cold slush seeped into my worn leather shoes.
When I entered Poongcheon Inn, a man who looked three or four years older than Gu-sam was receiving customers.
“Welcome!”
I didn’t recognize his face, but his voice sounded familiar. He was the cook I’d talked with in the kitchen, together with Gu-sam.
“Where’s Gu-sam?”
The cook swallowed hard, looking startled at the sight of a martial artist with a sword asking after a serving boy out of nowhere.
“I’ve had dinner delivered there every evening, but he hasn’t come the last two days. Is he sick?”
The cook, who had been gripping a towel and watching me nervously, let out a sigh of relief.
“Ah, so you’re the distinguished sir. I’m sorry. That Gu-sam... something happened to him.”
“Something happened? Where is he now?”
Following the cook, I went into the narrow quarters behind the inn. The sight of Gu-sam lying on a pallet with bandages wrapped around him left me speechless.
I walked over, water dripping from my clothes onto the wooden floor, and checked his condition.
He had been beaten so badly his face was swollen, and there was bandaging around his head too. Even when I called out to him, he couldn’t open his eyes. He was breathing, but he had no consciousness.
The unease I’d feared had turned into a grim reality, and my mood sank.
If I hadn’t taught him how to fight, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.
I was looking at the windmill lying beside his pillow when I clenched my fist and stood up.
Only then did I notice the splint on Gu-sam’s left arm, wrapped in bandages. It looked broken, but from the way it had been set up, someone with real skill had treated him properly.
Someone behind me cleared his throat. A middle-aged man with a timid air and kind, easy eyes. The innkeeper.
“You’re the customer who has dinner delivered every evening?”
“Yes. Did you call a physician?”
“Of course I did. The boy ended up like this, after all... Hoo.”
The innkeeper clicked his tongue and let out a heavy sigh.
“According to Doctor Sang, he’s done everything he could. We’ll have to watch him for a few days to know whether he’ll wake up or not. That old man used to be an army doctor, so when it comes to treating broken bones and injuries, there’s no one around here who can match him. His bone-setting and manipulation are first-rate too.”
“What happened?”
“Hoo... well, that’s the thing...”
With a voice thick with both sorrow and anger, the innkeeper explained everything that had happened.
By the time I finished listening, my head was spinning.
“So... you’re saying the bastard who came was the uncle of the cloth shop’s son?”
“Yes. He said he was going to avenge his nephew after the boy got beaten, and then he went and did this to him without warning. The damned bastard was so vicious we didn’t even dare try to stop him.”
“Where’s the cloth shop?”
The innkeeper, who had been venting his frustration, flinched.
“Sir. There...”
“Where is it?”
Seeing my face sharp with anger, the innkeeper could no longer try to stop me.
I left the inn and walked through the dark, rainy street. The inns and shops had shut their doors, and only the taverns had their windows open, bright with light.
The rain, driven by the wind, struck my face beneath the brim of my bamboo hat. Bitter thoughts rose in my mind.
Had I done something useless?
Should I have just ignored it? Would Gu-sam have had to keep living while being mocked and bullied? Did he regret learning how to fight from me?
He was a friendly little bastard, always smiling despite being an abandoned orphan who didn’t even know his parents’ faces.
Even while getting hit over and over, he hadn’t avoided his fights with the cloth shop’s son. He’d worked his footwork until his legs were shaking, and kept throwing punches and kicks with stubborn desperation.
Maybe the thing Gu-sam had truly been fighting so desperately for, in all that frantic struggling, was his own fate, which had never left him any choice at all.
Those two characters in his name, Gu-sam, branded into him like a mark of what he’d been abandoned for: one less mouth to feed.
When I remembered the way he’d finally won, swaggering back as though he owned the world, I could be certain of one thing.
Even if he was now writhing in pain on the edge of life and death, even if he died like that, Gu-sam would not regret it.
He’d probably go to the afterlife and brag just as excitedly about the bright, blazing tale of himself at the center of a short and miserable life.
So I decided not to regret it either. Neither the bond I’d made with him, nor whatever I was about to do from here on out.
The cloth shop was still open.
“Welcome. Are you looking for something?”
The smile of a weathered merchant greeted me beneath the long eaves. I lifted the brim of my bamboo hat and checked his face. It matched the description the innkeeper had given me exactly.
“Do you know a boy named Gu-sam? He’s the serving boy at Poongcheon Inn over there.”
It seemed he did. The smile vanished from the cloth shop owner’s face in an instant.