A Game of Tag
These bastards are dead today! Water bandits? Who the hell do they think they are!?
Wol-yeong's poison had surely been neutralized by now, but I could still feel something like blazing fire shooting from my eyes. With a fury like a volcano erupting in my chest, I glared at the water bandits.
"Keheheh."
"Boss, I like the sound of that! Gahaha!"
The water bandits were laughing their heads off over whatever amused them so much — but this unbearable rage of mine was about to be answered by Cho, who carried on Father's will.
I sent her my intent, not merely to capsize their boats, but to split them clean in half. Just split every last one of those boats down the middle, Cho!
I was already imagining those laughing faces turning ashen, their cackles twisting into screams — and then a quiet doubt drifted into my mind. Cho should already have launched by now. Shouldn't she?
Why is she late?
And right then, a single word suddenly rang through my head.
-Tsk? 『Why?』
My mind went blank with a dull thud. Of all things, a why had just echoed inside my skull.
W-wait. Don't tell me—!?
In a situation where she should have charged out on Father's request and magnificently smashed the water bandits' ships to pieces, what I got instead was a why. The sound of it made every hair on my head stand on end.
Of all moments, it seemed Cho had entered that phase every child goes through at least once in their growth — the why phase.
Why, of all crucial moments, does the why phase have to hit now!?
The why phase is that period that supposedly hits kids around four or five years old — starting with trivial questions and eventually flooding everything with the ultimate question: why? why? why? why? Children in this stage are also called "question-mark killers," for the way they murder their parents' mental health while floating a giant question mark over everything. And I had a strong feeling that was exactly what had found Cho.
Since evolving, her intelligence had clearly risen to roughly a middle- or high-school level — but Cho and Bin's actual common sense was still under a year old.
No. No. Maybe she's just curious because Daddy suddenly told her to go punish people. Calm down, So-ryong. If she just kills people because she's told to, she's a murder machine, not a daughter. Of course. Cho is growing up just fine.
Telling myself this was not the why phase at a critical moment, telling myself Cho was growing up wonderfully, I was about to calm down and explain the situation to her — when Seol noona's furious voice erupted beside me.
"Those bastards!? Mere water bandits dare—!? Should I just smash them to pieces!?"
Seol noona was rolling up her sleeves, looking ready to leap down in pure rage. She wasn't from the Central Plains, so of course she didn't understand a situation like this any better than I did.
"Unnie, p-please hold on. If we fight them we might take a few down, but in the meantime they'll cling to our hull and punch holes in it until we sink. So as angry as I am, let's just pay the passage fee and go. It's partly our fault for not flying the family banner properly."
"Damn it. Back in Yunnan I'd have caught every last one of them and fed them to the dogs!"
That was the sort of answer that said you avoid dung because it's filthy, not because you're afraid of it. Hwa-eun pulled the furious Seol noona back and asked the water bandits,
"Fine. Then how much is the passage fee?"
"Hmm… Well, with a ship this big and fine-looking, a hundred taels of silver will do!"
"A hundred taels!?"
The answer that came back to Hwa-eun's question was a hundred taels of silver. At her incredulous cry, the water bandit chief smirked.
"Hearing the dog-food talk just now, my men are feeling a little sore — so I think I'll have to take a bit more! Keheheh."
"Kh… Wait a moment."
Having overheard Seol noona's remark, the chief was using it as an excuse to raise the toll. A hundred taels of silver was a considerable sum. Back when I was on Hainan Island, I'd never even laid eyes on that much silver.
It wasn't that we had no money — but there was no way I was giving these trash a single coin even if I had to throw it in the garbage. So while Hwa-eun went into the cabin to fetch the money, I hurriedly explained to Cho.
"Uh… The reason you have to is, well… Ah! Right! Those guys said something bad to Mom! Yeah, something bad!"
What the bastard had actually said included an R-rated word, so it wasn't suitable for a child's education. I sanitized the vocabulary — and of course the questions kept coming.
-Tsrut? 『Something bad?』
"Uh, so… Ah! They said Mom isn't pretty. Those guys!"
I picked the words Cho and Bin were most sensitive about — but Cho looked back and forth between her own body and Hwa-eun, then tilted her head. What came next was the question of whether, since Mom had so few legs and no antennae, it wasn't perfectly reasonable to think that.
To win the affection of a man like Daddy, you needed antennae and plenty of legs, and Mom simply didn't have those.
O-our daughter has not only got a perfect read on Daddy's tastes, she's also growing into a very broad-minded child who can understand that other people think differently… Ahaha…
I felt a little grateful that Cho had my preferences nailed so perfectly — but she was also expanding Daddy's tastes and assuming every man must be the same. If those guys had so much as leaked killing intent, Cho would have charged in without asking a single question, which left me more than a little flustered.
I even considered just cursing them out loud to force some killing intent out of them — but if, like a moment ago, they only used the insult as an excuse to keep jacking up the price, that would be worse than doing nothing.
And then a truly excellent idea struck me.
Ah! That's it!
"Cho, then how about we play with those uncles over there?"
-Tsrut? 『Play?』
"Yeah. It's called tag. If you show yourself, those uncles will scream and run away — and your job is to catch them all so they can't escape. It'll be really fun…"
As I explained tag, Cho sent back a delighted feeling.
-Chut! 『I wanna!』
"Great. First, so the uncles can't run away, go flip their boats!"
-Tsrrrrr!
The instant the explanation ended, Cho finally rose from behind my back, floating up. As she wriggled slowly into the sky, the water bandits looking up from their ships went round-eyed, mouths hanging open.
"Th-th-that…"
"Th-th-th-th-that…"
"That…"
They pointed at Cho, jaws slack, unable to form words.
"What the hell are these idiots all babbling abou—!? Hoooooh!"
A beat late because he'd been busy with something else, the water bandit chief looked up at the sky and froze solid. A six-meter giant centipede flying through the air carried a truly overwhelming presence, after all.
Cho tilted her head with the cutest, daintiest little sound.
-Tsrut? 『Start?』
At that sound the water bandits scrambled in panic toward the farthest tips of their respective ships. Smiling at Cho's question as she waited for my answer, I replied,
"Yes! Go ahead and start!"
A game of tag with death.
-KRAK! Splash!
The moment my answer finished, Cho's massive tail end swept sideways. One ship split clean in two on the spot, and the water bandits' screams began to spread wide across the water.
"Kyaaaaah!"
"M-monster!"
"Kyaaaaaah!"
For Cho it was a game of tag. For the water bandits, it was the beginning of catastrophe.
A six-meter giant centipede playing tag is pure fun for the one doing the playing — but for the ones being tagged, it's a matter of life and death. And of course it is. Why do grandparents of four- and five-year-old grandchildren end up in hospitals with broken ribs and limbs? Because kids don't know how to moderate their strength when they play. What feels to them like a harmless little leap lands on Grandma and Grandpa's ribcage — and naturally, something breaks.
-KRAK!
Having snapped a ship clean in half, Cho scooped up a water bandit who had been swimming for his life with her tail and hurled him back toward a hull.
-THUD! Splash!
The bandit slammed into the side of a ship, slid down with a wet scrape, and plunged into the water with a splash. Cho's delighted cry rang out.
-Tsrrrrr! 『This is fun!』
"Uwaaaaaah!"
"R-run!"
"That's right, Cho! Just wipe them all out!"
With Seol noona cheering her on, Cho tore through the water bandits like a dragon rampaging among them, smashing ships left and right and herding people toward the center under threat.
And in the middle of that scene of pure pandemonium — Hwa-eun, who had gone into the cabin to get money and been startled by the racket of Cho running wild, burst out onto the deck with her eyes wide in shock.
"So-ryong! St-stop Cho! Th-the unspoken rules of the Murim…"
She seemed worried about some Murim code or other — but who cared about that right now? Gripping her shoulders, I said,
"Hwa-eun, I hate people who covet what is mine more than anything."
"What!?"
"So those bastards need to be taught a lesson."
Hwa-eun covered her flushed face and nodded blankly. She seemed to have realized exactly what "mine" meant when it came from my mouth.
With Hwa-eun's permission secured, I was considering how to thrash them even more effectively when new players announced their wish to join the game.
-Kishit?
-Tsrrr?
Yo-hwa and Bin had appeared from the cabin side, asking to be let in because something fun seemed to be happening.
Looks like we're getting more taggers.
As the bandits fled from Cho, Yo-hwa shot threads like a fishing line and reeled them up onto the deck, and Bin stood guard over the ones who had been hauled up, threatening them into stillness. The water bandits were subdued in short order.
Then, as Yo-hwa and Cho counted the captives over the heads of the kneeling men, the water bandits freaked out and wailed.
-Tsk, tsrr, tsrrr. Tsrrrrr.
-Ki. Kishishi…
"P-please spare us!"
"W-we were wrong! We had no idea you were masters of the Murim and we were terribly rude!"
"Please spare us!"
Bound in Yo-hwa's threads, the water bandits howled for their lives. They seemed to think Yo-hwa and Cho were debating whom to eat — when the two of them were simply checking who had caught more. I shouted at the wailing lot.
"Quiet! From this moment, anyone who so much as opens his mouth becomes a snack for the spirit beasts!"
-Tsrrrrr!?
-Kishit!?
The ones who actually flinched at the "snack for the spirit beasts" line were Cho and Yo-hwa. After reassuring them it was only a joke, I found myself wondering what to do with this lot, so I asked Hwa-eun. I'd rounded them up in a fit of temper without thinking about the next step.
"Hwa-eun, what exactly is this unspoken rule of the Murim?"
"Ah — in the Three Gorges of the Yangtze, the Yangtze River Water Bandit Alliance operates. There's a tacit pact: they don't touch ships flying the banners of the Nine Great Sects and the Seven Great Clans, and we don't go out of our way to suppress them."
"Ah… And without a banner, you pay the passage fee?"
"Yes, So-ryong."
"We've already broken the unspoken rule. So what happens now?"
Whatever the reason, we had broken that so-called code. When I asked what followed, Hwa-eun answered with a somewhat serious expression.
"The Yangtze River Water Bandit Alliance isn't just these men. It's a confederation of many water bandit groups. Since we've attacked one of them, if word gets out, other bandits will obstruct Tang ships and people from using the Yangtze. Then we'd have to offer gifts by way of apology. They're Murim people too, after all."
"Even after those bastards insulted you, Hwa-eun? They're the kind you could kill and still not feel satisfied?"
"I-I'm grateful for the thought, but… a-anyway, that's how the unspoken rule works…"
Hwa-eun's cheeks flushed again. I seemed to have scored points with her repeatedly, but my head was getting complicated. Depending on how this went, we might even have to present apology gifts to a pack of thieves.
What is this? Beggars are Murim people, thieves are Murim people, and now even water bandits are Murim people? This is a headache.
I thought it over carefully, then decided to test their reaction first. They looked so thoroughly terrified that we might be able to smooth this over easily. So I winked at Hwa-eun and spoke in a chilly voice.
"Where I come from, there's a saying that if there are no living people left, there's nothing left to make noise about…"
I cast a sidelong glance at the captives. The water bandit boss jolted in pure terror, pressed himself flat to the deck, and cried out,
"W-we saw nothing today and nothing happened! If you only spare our lives, we will keep our mouths shut! Y-yes. You can rest easy!"
They were definitely scared — but I couldn't fully relax. People are different going into the toilet and coming out. They might sing a different tune later.
They look pretty frightened… but what should I do? In my past life, how did people usually settle accidents…? Police? Insurance companies? Settlements? Ah! That's it! Settlements! There were settlements!
As the thought continued, what floated up in my mind was an on-the-spot settlement. By the standards of my previous life, the best way to handle something like this was to settle it on the scene. Even with a traffic accident, sorting it out on the spot with cash was simpler and better than calling the police and the insurance companies. You work out the ratio of fault, exchange settlement money, write up a pledge — and later no one can claim otherwise.
"Hwa-eun, couldn't we just settle this right here?"
"Settle?"
"Yes. One moment."
While Hwa-eun tilted her head at the talk of a settlement, I turned a cold voice on the water bandit chief.
"Nothing happened, you say? You lot, blinded by greed, forced your way onto a Tang ship intending to plunder it? And you even snapped the family banner just to dodge the unspoken rule?"
Ah, and of course, the settlement ratio was ten to zero.