Blood and Snow
When training was over, Ak Jiho went straight to the bedside of his younger sister.
"You're here? Read me the rest of that book you were reading before."
Ak Seo-ah always asked him to read aloud the stories of wandering heroes, smiling with that same strained expression, and Ak Jiho always granted the request gladly.
With one hand clasping his sister's tightly and the other turning the pages, he read those tales again and again until the night grew deep.
"..."
Only when her eyelids, too heavy to fight sleep any longer, slowly drifted shut did Ak Jiho close the book and rise from his seat.
"If I could suffer even half as much as you do in your place, how much better that would be."
He drew the blanket up carefully, afraid she might wake, and let out a thin, trembling sigh.
They had been born from the same mother’s womb, and yet why was it that, unlike him, his sister had to endure such difficult days?
At times he felt wronged. At times he felt anger. And at times, an overwhelming helplessness rose up and drowned him in despair.
If there was any relief at all, it was that he had found one thing that could hold Ak Seo-ah’s interest, when almost nothing else could.
Even if the stories of wandering heroes were absurd and the endings obvious, his sister would brighten with delight whenever she heard them.
Perhaps she was trying to see herself reflected in those heroes.
In truth, the reason no longer mattered.
If he could keep seeing that glimmer in her eyes, he would gladly recite the same story a hundred times, a thousand times over.
"If Father cannot do it, then I will scour all of Zhongyuan and find a way to cure your illness. So until then... please, just until then..."
---
That morning, as though the whole world had fallen silent, heavy snow continued to drift down without end.
Ak Jiho’s guilt spread across the white ground like a red stain seeping into snow.
"Miss...!"
Servants came running with deathly pale faces, flinging aside whatever they had been holding.
Even amid the uproar, he stood frozen in place, unable to move a muscle.
He could only stare at his sister as she coughed up a mouthful of blood and collapsed weakly to the floor.
Only after Ak Seo-ah had been carried away on a servant’s back did Ak Jiho seem to lose all strength and sink down onto the ground.
"..."
Was all this blood truly pouring from the mouth of such a small sister?
Clutching at his blood-soaked eyes in a daze, he felt— for the first time in his life — as though his whole body were being torn to pieces, and with it, an icy coldness he had never known before.
Winter.
So this was what it meant to be cold in winter.
Tears spilled down into the snow, mingling with his sister’s blood as they spread hot across the white.
In the end, Ak Jiho could not bear it any longer and collapsed face-first into the snow.
---
After Ak Seo-ah fell ill, the Shandong Ak Family’s manor was wrapped in a heavy silence day after day.
The physicians shook their heads and said there was nothing more they could do, and the servants suppressed even the sound of their crying as they sobbed in secret.
Just as death was inching closer to the child’s side, a stroke of heaven-sent fortune descended upon the Shandong Ak Family.
The Divine Physician, who had wandered all over Zhongyuan devoting himself to the poor and helpless, had come to seek them out for reasons known only to him.
"Well then, let me take a look."
The Divine Physician checked Ak Seo-ah’s pulse several times, then clicked his tongue and nodded as though he had already grasped the matter in broad strokes.
"When the young of a martial family fall ill, one usually suspects Severed Vessel Syndrome, caused by blockage in the Twelve Meridians or the Eight Extraordinary Vessels. And the only thing most physicians can do is treat those two areas, more or less."
He unpacked his bag, took out a set of needles, and without even asking for the permission of the Shandong Ak Family’s head, Ak Gun-bul, he immediately began to insert them.
"But this child’s regular meridians and the eight vessels are perfectly sound. It’s the fine secondary channels spread throughout the body like a net that have tangled together. The flow of a great river is easy to see, but the little streams and tributaries are much harder to notice. No wonder ordinary physicians couldn’t cure her."
When the Divine Physician himself had taken up his art, who in the world would dare stop him?
Besides, to restore the tangled secondary meridians throughout the body to their proper place was a feat so profound that even Ak Gun-bul, who knew nothing of medicine, could scarcely imagine it.
So rather than anger, he could only set aside even the dignity of the family head and beg with due respect.
"Whatever method you use, and however much wealth it takes, I do not care. Please, save my daughter."
At Ak Gun-bul’s entreaty, the Divine Physician seemed to consider the matter for a moment before slowly nodding.
"If I’ve laid a hand on her, then I should see it through. But I can’t simply ignore those who are waiting for me around here, so I have one request for you, Family Head."
Even without hearing the rest, Ak Gun-bul guessed what he meant and nodded at once.
"I will summon every physician in the family and nearby, and have them examine the sick."
Hearing the answer he wanted, the Divine Physician finally smiled in satisfaction.
"If you’ll do that, I couldn’t ask for more. But there is one thing I need to ask."
"What is it?"
"Has this child perhaps been taught martial arts?"
At the unexpected question, Ak Gun-bul showed a flash of surprise.
"How could that be? For a child who even finds running difficult, how could she possibly..."
"Hah... Then, as I thought..."
"...What do you mean?"
Before the puzzled Ak Gun-bul, the Divine Physician furrowed his brow slightly and went on.
"This child seems to have tried, by herself, to imitate the breathing method of an internal energy technique."
---
"At first, I could hardly believe it. How could a child who was confined to bed possibly know to imitate breathing? But soon, it turned out that everything the Divine Physician had said was true."
Even after finishing the long recollection, it seemed as though there was still more to say. Master Ma paused to catch his breath, then continued.
"Seo-ah apparently begged desperately to be taught martial arts. Jiho refused at first, naturally, but... since she was asking to become a little more like a wandering hero before she died, he must not have been able to say no. No matter how composed he tried to appear, in the end he was still just a child."
As the siblings’ past rose vividly before Cheongwol’s eyes, she could not find the words to answer.
If her grandfather had been in front of her, and if she had one desperate wish to make before closing her eyes, she too would never have been able to pretend not to hear it.
"In the end, he clenched his eyes shut and taught her only part of the breathing formula for the internal energy method. As for the spear technique, he just demonstrated the opening forms briefly. And yet she tried to breathe using only those fragments, which only proves how extraordinary Seo-ah’s talent for martial arts was. Though, in the end, it turned against her as poison."
"...And that made her condition worse."
"Exactly. If the Divine Physician had been delayed by even one more day, Seo-ah would not have lived to see the next year."
Looking at Master Ma, who sighed with a calm and worn expression, Cheongwol also lifted her head and glanced toward the sky.
The fading crimson clouds were preparing, somewhere between day and night, to welcome the moon.
"I understand that the young family head cherished his sister. But it’s also true that he’s now oppressing Seo-ah so severely that I can’t simply take your word for it. To call it mere guilt... the pieces just don’t fit."
Master Ma nodded as though he understood Cheongwol’s feelings.
"During that year and more while Seo-ah recovered her health, Jiho never once went to see her. He kept missing his little sibling, but in the end, he never got to see her at all."
"...Why not?"
"Because after that day, Jiho erased pity from his own heart. He said that pity gave birth to compassion, and that compassion nearly got his sister killed, so it was only natural."
"..."
"The problem, as you know, is that Seo-ah was utterly captivated by tales of wandering heroes. Like I said before, her talent for martial arts was quite remarkable, was it not? What happens when such a child learns martial arts?"
Without meaning to, Cheongwol pictured Ak Seo-ah’s bright smile and gave a faint laugh.
"She wouldn’t have stayed still."
"Exactly. At first she went around beating up the big kids near the house, then the local toughs, and after that the wandering thugs who were causing trouble. And then..."
Just remembering it seemed to anger Master Ma all over again; he gritted his teeth.
"There was a day she ran into those men known as the Three Notorious Dogs of Jiangxi. They had been raping women and fleeing through Jiangxi, but old habits die hard, and they had the audacity to harass a married woman on Shandong Ak Family land. Seo-ah just happened to be passing by."
"Don't tell me..."
"No, fortunately, the thing you’re worried about never happened. The hidden guards watching over her dealt with them before Seo-ah could even step in. But... word of it reached Jiho’s ears, so what do you think happened?"
Remembering the murderous look Ak Jiho had given his sister, Cheongwol lightly bit her lower lip.
"Did he hurl abuse at her?"
"If that were all, how much better it would have been..."
Master Ma stopped speaking for a moment and lowered his head.
It was as though he had been thinking of the day Ak Jiho first laid a hand on Seo-ah — a day that could not be forgotten no matter how hard one tried.
Up to then, they had gotten by safely, thanks to good fortune. But what if a day came when the family’s reach no longer extended to them?
What if, in the midst of the ever-more chaotic affairs of Zhongyuan, Seo-ah continued to mimic a hero’s life, relying only on her natural talent?
The sister he cherished so deeply that he would have given his own life in her place might one day return to him as a cold corpse.
And if that moment came after his silence...
Then it would be no different from killing his sister with his own hands twice over.
"One of them grew more and more desperate, wanting to lock his sister away in some safe place even if he had to use force; the other saw even that as adversity and still wanted to pursue righteousness and chivalry. If you understand, then please tell me."
With eyes full of tangled emotion, Master Ma met Cheongwol’s gaze.
"Whose fault was it that things ended up like this?"
---