The Martial Artist
The thug who had beaten up Gu-sam went by the name Jang Ho-dal.
“Whaaat? That man is our boy’s uncle? No, no, that can’t be right. I’ve never had a brother like that. What kind of nonsense is that...”
The fabric shop owner nearly jumped out of his skin and waved both hands frantically.
For a moment, I thought he was trying to wriggle out of it now that things had turned serious, but after hearing him out, I realized that wasn’t the case.
The owner of the fabric shop was a man named Bang. Jang Ho-dal was just a common lowlife who came by now and then, picked fights by claiming the clothes he bought there were defective, and shook a little money out of them. He wasn’t family, and they weren’t close.
Jang Ho-dal couldn’t extort money openly.
Like most shops in Seochon’s prosperous district that weren’t under the protection of Yongcheon Escort Agency, the fabric store paid a regular tribute to the Black Night Gang.
No one liked some random bastard sticking his chopsticks into their rice bowl. Least of all the black-path men.
Jang Ho-dal didn’t have the guts to provoke the Black Night Gang and wind up as a corpse stabbed to death while pissing in some back alley of Seochon’s pleasure quarter.
So he had been licking his lips and waiting for a chance, and then one had fallen into his lap.
He heard that the fabric shop owner’s eldest son had come home after getting beaten, and he stepped up, saying he’d take revenge in his place.
It didn’t matter that they told him it was fine, that they turned him down, that they tried to stop him and asked why he was getting involved in a children’s fight.
Jang Ho-dal had rushed straight to Poongcheon Inn and thrashed Gu-sam senseless.
Then he had gone back to the fabric shop and demanded payment for his trouble.
After ripping off the money, Jang Ho-dal strutted around as if he’d become their lifesaver.
I’d bet my life that men like that never stopped at once. From then on, every time he thought of it, he’d come back to the fabric shop and hold out his hand like a debt collector.
The shop owner seemed to know it too. That was what I gathered from how readily he told me the man’s name and the gambling den he frequented.
He didn’t seem to be lying.
I’d know once I met him.
Just as I was stepping out from under the eaves, the fabric shop owner called after me in a hurry.
“Uh, hero...”
When I turned, he glanced at me and asked cautiously, “Has Gu-sam been badly hurt?”
His damp face in the dim lamplight and the careful tone of his voice made his worry plain.
I looked at him for a moment, then said nothing and walked back out into the rain.
The back alley Gu-sam had once guided me through was dark and desolate.
The thickening rain had blurred my view, but finding the gambling den wasn’t hard.
It was one of the few lit buildings around, a fairly large place guarded by broad-shouldered men with sabers at their waists.
Even on a rainy night, it was loud as hell.
I scanned the taverns with their doors open here and there, then stepped into one that sat a little apart.
The small tavern had no empty seats.
Every last face lounging there, drinking away their leisure, looked either coarse or vicious. They were the usual scum of the martial world, the sort of criminals you half expected to find masks tucked into their clothes if you searched them.
More than a few of them smelled like blood.
By the window with a clear view of the gambling den sat a middle-aged martial artist, staring at an empty wine cup.
At first glance, he looked deep in thought, though it also seemed he might have wanted another drink and simply lacked the money for it.
“Mind if I join you?”
The middle-aged man lifted his head. His gaze was a little unfocused when he looked up at me.
It wasn’t because he was drunk. His eyes sharpened in an instant, flashing with a keen light. He wasn’t drunk at all.
He looked like a man staring off at some distant place he could never return to. Still, it was the sort of night that made you chew over bitter memories. Lonely and dreary...
Before the middle-aged man could reach for the longsword propped beside him, I spoke quickly.
“There weren’t any seats. I’ll buy the drinks.”
He looked down at the empty cup and nodded.
“Then have a seat.”
I took off my rain hat and bamboo hat, setting them to one side. I loosened my saber as well and called the tavern boy over for some decent liquor and side dishes.
The moment I lifted the bottle, some fool came over licking his lips, trying to mooch a drink.
The middle-aged man glared at him and snapped, “Get lost.”
The heavy killing intent made the fool flinch and back away.
I’d eaten plenty of knife work myself, but the man in front of me had the kind of fierce aura that suggested he’d dragged himself this far by swallowing other people’s blood.
And yet his expression wasn’t all that vicious. There was no slyness or underhandedness to him either.
Every now and then, you ran into swordsmen like that. They’d ended up in this line of work somehow, but beneath the surface they still seemed more decent than the gutter trash around them.
That still made them martial artists who would cut you down if things went wrong. A blade didn’t hurt less just because you politely asked before stabbing someone.
I pictured how I’d handle him if we came to blows.
It was the first time I’d seen this swordsman. I had no reason, and no intention, to fight him, but someday I might.
That had happened a few times before. You’d sit together by chance, get pretty familiar, and then before long the two of you would have to kill each other.
If I wanted to put even a little more distance between myself and the King of Hell, I had to think about the one-in-a-hundred-case and prepare for it.
Hell was where I’d end up one day anyway. No reason to hurry there.
Maybe he really had been short on drink. The middle-aged man downed a cup in one go without hesitation. When I refilled it, he finally gave an embarrassed smile.
“Well now, I’m being treated without even exchanging names. I’m Won Seo-gang.”
“Jeong Mo.”
“So you’re Hero Jeong. On a foul night like this, where have you been off to?”
“Who knows.”
I let the answer trail off and looked out the window. In the pitch-black dark, the gambling den looked as though it would never stop thriving.
Won Seo-gang chuckled as if he understood.
“Here to catch the gamble sticks?”
“That place is a gambling den?”
“They say it’s the biggest pitch-pot house in Seochon. It’s run by the Black Night Gang, so there’s no chance of winning and not getting to take the money with you.”
“Is there any gambling den where you can’t take the money? The problem starts after you walk out.”
Following my gaze, Won Seo-gang looked around the room and let out a snort.
“Khrrr, that’s true enough.”
Not everyone who gathered here had come just to drink themselves stupid. The black-hearted intent of choosing a seat with a clear view of the gambling den was obvious enough.
No matter how carefully you tried to hide it, anyone who won money had their luck written all over their face.
It was common enough anywhere in the Central Plains for some bastard to trail after them, stick a knife in their back, and steal their purse.
On a rainy night like this, it was even easier to hide the traces.
The broad-shouldered guards only kept an eye on the inside of the gambling den. Whatever happened outside, they didn’t care.
There was no easier way to make enemies than winning money in a gambling den.
The losers might come after you with weapons in their hands, and if the amount was large enough, they’d even hire assassins from the gambling house itself.
That had happened at the table where I’d last sat too.
I’d even shared out a generous cut, but before I could leave the alley, I’d been surrounded front and back by knife-wielding bastards.
I didn’t want to cause that kind of trouble after coming home. So I stayed outside instead of entering the gambling den.
Just standing here and watching made my fingers itch with habit.
If I got swept up in the atmosphere of these losers with bloodshot eyes and burning tempers, I might end up teaching someone a lesson and ruining everything.
So I idly rolled the wine cup in my hand instead of using it, and waited.
A laborer in a rain cape dragged a cart past the front of the tavern.
Wondering what he was doing out in weather like this, I watched as the cart stopped in front of the gambling den.
When the guard at the entrance signaled him over, the laborer tipped back his bamboo hat.
A gloomy face was revealed in the lamplight.
Where had I seen him? Narrowing my eyes, I stared until I remembered.
It was on the mountain the first day I came back home. The man who had been surrounded by knife-carrying ruffians, trembling as he dug a grave for himself.
If he was still alive and well, then all that digging on the mountain had probably been a bluff after all.
He carried a few wine jars into the gambling den, then pulled the cart away and disappeared beyond the alley.
What kind of man was he?
I was sure I’d seen him when I was young, but I couldn’t remember him at all.
My thoughts didn’t linger for long.
Someone came out of the gambling den. This face was familiar too.
He reached out a hand to test the rain, grimaced, and spat out a string of curses. He took the broadsword he’d left with the guard and strapped it to his waist, then headed off through the rain toward the far end of the alley.
“I should get going.”
I drained my cup and stood. I strapped my saber to my waist, put my rain hat back on, and tucked the bamboo hat into place.
“There’s still wine left.”
“Drink it yourself.”
“I’ll buy the next round.”
“Then let’s do that.”
I’d already paid when the wine came, so Won Seo-gang didn’t try to stop me.
When I stepped out into the night streets, the rain beat against my whole body like the belly of some great beast.
It was late spring, not far off from summer, and yet the rain was cold enough to bite. My body, warmed by drink, began to chill in an instant.
Rain like this would slowly wear down your strength and your body heat even under a rain hat. I needed to finish this quickly and get back.
I turned my head, checking behind me and to either side as I quickened my pace. The harsh rain was loud enough to hide my footsteps fairly well.
Keeping my eyes on Jang Ho-dal’s back as he picked his way around puddles, I recalled the information I’d heard from the innkeeper.
The innkeeper hadn’t gone on and on about what Jang Ho-dal looked like.
He’d only said that I’d know his face.
The mountain on my first day back home. The bastard who had picked a fight with me at the inn and ended up clutching his solar plexus after I sent him sprawling.
That was Jang Ho-dal.
According to the fabric shop owner, he’d boasted that he’d be joining the Black Night Gang soon enough.
The Black Night Gang didn’t accept just anyone. Even though they were black-path men, they charged a whole two taels of silver as the admission fee.
But once you became part of the Black Night Gang, you no longer had to worry about how to survive. You wouldn’t be beaten around anymore either.
Jang Ho-dal had always bragged that once he joined the Black Night Gang, there were plenty of people he’d be able to fix up.
But this time it looked like he was really trying to get in, poisoned all over with ambition and running around trying to scrape up money. That was why he’d stuck his nose into a children’s fight so shamelessly.
From what I heard, it had something to do with me. Ever since I’d put him in his place at the inn, he’d been roaming around with his eyes turned bloodshot, saying he was going to tear me to pieces.
What would happen if that bastard got into the shadow of the Black Night Gang? He’d go digging for where I lived alongside the gang’s killers.
Maybe he already knew.
If I’d driven the knife into his chest instead of the sheath that day, none of this would have happened.
Because I’d spared him on my first day back home, not wanting to see blood right away, I was now making trouble for other people in a roundabout way, and a knife had been turned toward my back.
Even without Gu-sam’s business, I had to kill him.
To keep the blood of strangers from staining my precious home, and to avoid any collision with the Black Night Gang.
Breaking one of his legs and leaving him crippled would be no better than leaving him alone at all.
I would kill him. Here and now.
Jang Ho-dal turned left into a side alley in a place where the Black Night Gang’s headquarters could still be seen in the distance.
It was a road leading into a poor district crowded with filthy makeshift houses.
As I followed him in, I drew my saber and broke into a run. The distance closed in an instant.
Only then did Jang Ho-dal sense someone behind him and look back. His eyes widened in shock as he drew his broadsword.
Clang!
He managed to block the blow aimed at his face, but that was exactly the movement I’d wanted.
Using the recoil, I spun my saber overhead. At the same time, I shifted left with my footwork and slashed diagonally across the empty left side of his body.
Puaaaat!
Blood with the stench of fish spilled out from the wound cleaved in a single breath from chest to abdomen.
I stepped back a few paces, my rain hat and rain cape soaked through with blood.
No further attack was necessary. The sensation of my blade cutting through muscle and bone had already gone far beyond lethal.
Jang Ho-dal made a boiling sound in his throat and collapsed where he stood.
He wasn’t dead at once. He coughed helplessly in the cold rain and died quickly. Blood kept pouring out of his body in streams. Even if the Great Divine Immortal himself showed up, he wasn’t going to be saved.
I stood there in the rain with my saber lowered and watched.
I could have ended it in one stroke, but I didn’t want to ease his pain.
Watching a villain thrash around and die in fear and agony made me feel like the messenger from the underworld.
The desperate coughing finally stopped. Soon even his breathing cut off.
Shhhhhhhhh!!
Through the cracks of silence, the sound of rain swelled and surged.
I didn’t know whether this had paid off all the sins he’d committed in his life, but he wouldn’t be committing any more.
I pressed my blade to his throat and shoved his shoulder with my foot. He died with his eyes still wide open.
I wiped down the saber, rubbing it against the dead man’s clothes where the blood had run, then sheathed it.
I knelt on one knee and searched his pockets.
When he’d come out of the gambling den, his expression had been ugly, and as expected, his purse was light.
Then I heard hurried footsteps splashing through a puddle behind me. I quickly backed into a side alley and hid myself in the dark.
Through the sliver of moonlight breaking weakly through the clouds, I made out the shapes of two roughnecks running toward me with knives in their hands.
I couldn’t tell whether they’d followed him from the gambling den or come out of that tavern earlier, but their purpose was the same.
“Damn it, someone got to him first?”
“That’s what I said, hurry up!”
“You know how vicious this bastard was? You think the two of us can beat him?”
“Shit, if I’d known this, I should’ve just killed him last time...”
“Weren’t we supposed to keep our heads down until we got into the Black Night Gang?”
“That bastard wouldn’t shut his mouth about having a big brother he knew in the Black Night Gang. He said all we needed was to scrape together the entry fee...”
“And you believed that?”
“You didn’t?”
Their voices were unfamiliar, but I’d seen their faces before.
They were the same pair who had been drinking with Jang Ho-dal at Poongcheon Inn on the first day I returned home.
They’d helped Jang Ho-dal to his feet and dragged him off after I hit him in the solar plexus. At the time, I’d thought they were loyal enough, but in truth they’d probably just been waiting for an opening.
“Damn it... strip him first.”
The two fools lacked both the skill and the nerve to become murder-robbers.
Still, it seemed a shame to leave empty-handed, so they stripped the corpse’s clothes off anyway. They even took the underclothes, the shoes, and the broadsword before fleeing into the rain.
Jang Ho-dal lay sprawled naked on the ground, just as he must have been when he first came into the world.
The blood pouring from his body stretched out in long cords like an umbilical rope, then blurred into the rainwater, making him look strangely like a stillborn infant.
Heavy rain lashed down without pause, whipping the worthless corpse that had, over a lifetime far longer than that of a helpless baby, accumulated far more sins.
The road home, looping around the alleyways, was long and dark like a maze.
It was the first killing I’d committed since coming back to my hometown. I didn’t feel regret or guilt. I only felt filthy.
When I first became a martial artist, I regretted killing people. At some point, I started regretting the ones I hadn’t killed instead.
There were too many men in this world who deserved death, and once such men formed a grudge, they never forgot it.
I was one of those martial artists too. A man who deserved to die, and one who had never forgotten a grudge.
Today I killed him, but someday I would be killed.
I’d only been away for an hour or two at most, and yet my house felt as unfamiliar and forlorn as though it had been abandoned long ago.
I washed the rain hat and bamboo hat and hung them under the eaves, then tossed my saber into the room. Even with the rain pouring so hard, the scent of blood still clung faintly to my nose.
I stripped off all my clothes and went out into the yard. The heavy rain beat savagely against my face and body.
Trembling in the cold that worked its way down to my bones, I washed my hair with rainwater and cleaned my face and body.
I built a fire in the brazier to warm the room, drank hot tea to bring some heat back into my body, and then crawled under the blankets.
My sleep was uneasy, but I didn’t have a nightmare.
When I woke the next day, my body felt heavy. My head was hot, and I kept coughing. It was a bad cold.
*
The rain stopped two days later. By then, Gu-sam had opened his eyes too.
Whether it was because his will to live was strong, or because of the physician’s skill, I didn’t know, but he got out of bed that very day.
A month later, the splint holding his left arm fixed was removed too.
He still wasn’t able to make deliveries, so he came to the inn every evening to eat dinner.
Even after having come back from the brink of death, Gu-sam was still cheerful and full of talk. That was a relief.
Not everything was the same, though. If I was eating at the inn, the neighborhood kids would come swarming in looking for Gu-sam.
They hadn’t come to fight. They had come to see the boss.
Gu-sam had become the new alley boss of Seochon’s lanes.
Bang Ho-jin, the fabric shop owner’s son who had been the previous alley boss, was scorned as a cowardly bastard who had lost a fight and then gone running to the adults to snitch.
Even in the world of children, there were rules. Especially among boys whose daily life was throwing punches, a kid who tattled to adults wasn’t even treated like a person.
An adult interfering in children’s business was an unforgivable breach. Worse than throwing dirt in someone’s eyes or swinging a weapon.
On the surface, it seemed a little like the principle that officials should not meddle in the martial world, but the children were far stricter about it.
When the government didn’t interfere in martial affairs, it meant that if martial artists killed one another, the authorities didn’t care.
In reality, enormous sects like Wudang and Shaolin, not to mention the Five Great Families and the smaller factions, were all connected to the government in one way or another.
They kept feeding their secular disciples into official posts and the military, and they quietly relied on the government to keep rival sects in check or wipe them out.
There were no exceptions in the children’s world.
Bang Ho-jin knew that well enough. He hadn’t meant to, but in the end he had tattled, and Gu-sam had nearly died because of it.
Everyone had glared at him with contempt and narrowed eyes. It was Gu-sam who had saved Bang Ho-jin from being unable to lift his head.
He explained that Bang Ho-jin wasn’t a sneaky snitch and cleared up the misunderstanding.
Overwhelmed, Bang Ho-jin wiped his tears with his sleeve, swore loyalty, and declared himself the boss’s right-hand man.
Food deliveries started again.
When I opened the gate to the sound of someone pounding on it, Gu-sam was grinning brightly. Bang Ho-jin stood behind him with his head lowered.
“You came together?”
“Yes, sir. Hero, could you teach my right-hand man a bit of fighting?”
“Hmm. Do as you like.”
While I ate, Gu-sam taught Bang Ho-jin footwork and basic fist techniques in the yard.
“Trade-secret strike! Drunk truth! The uselessness of life!”
At first he taught as he had learned, but later he started making up his own names for the moves and flailing around in all sorts of absurd stances.
Bang Ho-jin, in turn, followed along with a grave expression and sweat pouring down his face, as though this were some peerless martial scripture.
I was so dumbfounded that I stopped halfway through making a pinwheel and just watched, and for some reason my mood grew strange.
Maybe that was what the loyalty of the Jianghu looked like, something I’d never truly felt for myself.
I set down the knife I’d been using and looked up at the sky. It was dazzlingly blue. The trees had burst into full green on every branch.
I closed my eyes, listening to Gu-sam spout his nonsense forms. A mild breeze stroked my face softly.
It was a calm, peaceful early summer.