The Weight of an Apology
At my words, the leader of the water bandits stared at me with a dazed look, as if someone had just smacked him across the head with an open palm. Behind him, the rest of the crew wore equally blank, slack-jawed expressions as they turned my way.
Claiming they’d done something they never had clearly left them flabbergasted.
What? Why? What’re you gonna do about it, huh?
In moments like this, shamelessness was the best policy. I just stared back at them with a look that said exactly that, and the pirate chief hurriedly waved his hands, insisting they had never done any such thing.
“W-what are you talking about…? We only came because we heard a ship without a clan banner was passing through the Three Gorges of the Yangtze. We just wanted to check… We never even boarded. We only asked for a little toll from outside the ship… Well, maybe a little more than a little…”
The kind of person I hated most wasn’t the rude one or the ill-mannered one. It was the one who couldn’t take a hint. Why? Because they were exhausting, and they always forced you to keep talking.
My mouth’s getting tired already.
Even back when I streamed, I’d forgive viewers who cracked tasteless jokes or crossed the line—but the ones who just didn’t get it and kept spouting nonsense? Instant ban, no mercy.
I gave the pirate chief a single glance, then called Cho over and stroked her head while I spoke. If they couldn’t remember what they’d done, I’d just have to jog their memory. They seemed to be suffering from some kind of short-term amnesia, and the best treatment for any memory loss was always shock therapy.
“Aigoo. Are the kids hungry? Cho, you hungry? Want something to eat? Look at that—nicely washed in the river and plump with meat…”
-Chirp? Eat? What?
No, Daddy’s just joking.
-Chirp? Why?
Uh… well… to scare the uncle?
-Chirp? Why scare him?
…
See that? If they’d just been sharp enough to catch on, I wouldn’t be stuck answering Cho’s endless “why?”s.
While I was suffering through Cho’s worsening case of the “why?” disease inside my head, the pirate chief finally got the message. He crawled toward my feet like a wriggling caterpillar and cried out with desperate eyes.
“N-now that I think about it! Y-yes, we did that! We must have lost our minds for a moment after being startled by the spirit beasts and forgotten everything!
Blinded by greed, we stormed the Tang clan ship and tried to plunder it! Yes, that’s right!”
A strong shock to the brain, and sure enough, the memories came flooding back—or so the pirate chief claimed. More accurately, they were memories that had never existed, but when a man’s life hung by a thread, even non-existent memories had a way of surfacing.
I decided to carefully fill in the parts he’d conveniently left out. He’d skipped the important ones, after all.
“Ahem. And why did you leave out insulting the young lady of the Tang clan!?”
“I-insulting her too! Yes! We’re dead men!”
“And snapping the clan banner to dodge the unwritten rules?”
“R-right. The clan banner! We snapped that too!”
At their chief’s shout, the other bandits all nodded along. Soon they were taking turns answering my questions themselves.
“So, who was bold enough to break the Tang clan’s banner?”
“This bastard! This one! I saw him!”
“Th-that’s right. It was me! Young Master! I broke it.”
“And where did that banner go?”
“Uh… right! I-into the water! It sank!”
“A flag tied to a wooden pole just sank in the water?”
“Huk! N-no way! We tied a rock to it and sank it! Yes, a rock!”
Now they were busily assembling defendants, witnesses, and circumstantial evidence among themselves. I crossed my arms and muttered under my breath with a grave expression.
“Ahem… Thinking it over carefully, that really is a capital offense, isn’t it?”
“It sure is. So-ryong? Should we just catch them all and throw them to the dogs—no, to the spirit beasts as feed for such wicked deeds?”
Sister Seol chimed in cheerfully, matching the rhythm of the moment. With her little brother singing and Sister Seol beating the drum, our timing was perfect.
“Aigoo! Spare us!”
“Young Master, please show us mercy!”
Soaked to the bone, the bandits sniveled and whined—whether those were real tears or fake ones was anyone’s guess.
-Churrrrr!
Cho seemed to find their reaction amusing and let out a low growl. A few of the more faint-hearted ones collapsed on the spot, foaming at the mouth.
That should be enough.
I’d cured their collective amnesia, and now they’d all confessed their crimes. The basic mindset for discussing settlement terms felt firmly in place. I casually tossed out the next line.
“So, you look like the leader of these water bandits… What’s your name?”
“I-I am Yi Tae, the Blood Wind Ferryman of the Three Gorges of the Yangtze!”
In the murim, a moniker was a kind of nickname, usually bestowed by others out of respect rather than chosen by the person himself. It typically reflected the man’s martial arts or temperament. Hwa-eun’s moniker, Poison Flower Moon Laurel, for instance, carried the meaning of a beautiful woman who wielded poison arts—poison as the thorn of a rose, beauty as the flower itself.
But there was no chance anyone had given a water bandit a moniker out of respect. He’d clearly made it up himself. I snorted a quiet laugh.
“Ah, so you’re the great hero Blood Wind Ferryman, I see.”
“G-great hero? Y-you flatter me.”
“Yes, well, anyway. Blood Wind Ferryman, your crimes are quite serious, but I’m not fond of bloodshed. So I was thinking of settling this with a proper apology. What do you say?”
The moment the words left my mouth, hope flickered back into the deathly pale faces of the bandits. They’d been trembling at the prospect of becoming a giant centipede’s or spider’s next meal, and now a path to survival had appeared. With a lifeline dangling in front of them, how could they not grab it?
He barked an order at his men.
“Th-thank you, Young Master! Thank you! What are you all standing around for?! Apologize already!”
I’d said “a proper apology,” and now the pirate chief Yi Tae was browbeating his subordinates into begging for forgiveness. At his shout, the bandits all bowed their heads and apologized in unison.
“W-we’re sorry! Young Master.”
“Please forgive us! Young Master.”
“We were wrong! Young Master!”
I’d said a proper apology, yet it seemed they intended to settle everything with nothing but their mouths. That was a problem. I was a man who had lived in a capitalist world. An apology spoken only with the lips meant nothing to me.
People said sincerity was what mattered in an apology, that it had to come from the heart. But the heart was invisible. If you measured by the heart alone, you could never gauge how truly sorry the other side was. In a capitalist society, a spoken apology had no value—because you couldn’t measure sincerity.
So how did a capitalist society weigh the sincerity of an apology?
By the weight of money. A hundred won bought you a hundred won’s worth of apology; a thousand won bought a thousand won’s worth.
It’s not like I need the money, but rules are rules.
I listened to the chorus of apologies until it quieted down, then asked Yi Tae,
“I heard from Hwa-eun earlier that when someone breaks the unwritten rules, they’re supposed to offer a gift of apology…”
Yi Tae flinched. He eyed me carefully, then explained in a pleading voice.
“Y-Young Master. P-people often misunderstand because we work as water bandits in the Three Gorges, but we’re not that wealthy.
To avoid the occasional government patrols, we can only sail on foggy days or when the soldiers are gone. And when the monsoon swells the river, we can’t even put our boats out.
That’s not all. Ships under the protection of the Nine Great Sects and Five Great Clans are increasing by the day, so even when we do pirate, we barely scrape by. Recently the water rose so suddenly we couldn’t launch for over ten days.
Today we finally came out in a hurry after eating nothing but fishy river fish for ten days, just because we heard a ship without a clan banner was passing…”
Behind him, the bandits nodded tearfully along with his words.
“We just wanted to eat some rice…”
“Kkeuk… We’re not that bad, really.”
Oh? These bastards are pulling the waterworks?
Just as they were about to try getting away with a bare-mouthed apology, a voice called out.
“S-So-ryong-nim!”
“Helmsman?”
While we had been talking, the helmsman—who had earlier disappeared toward the cabin with one of the boatmen—came running up to me in a panic.
“T-the young lady is thrashing about and throwing people back onto the ship! Water’s leaking in again!”
Damn it.
We had made temporary repairs and had been carefully navigating the strong currents of the Three Gorges precisely because we were worried about leaks. Cho’s rampage must have messed something up in the patched sections.
“Is it leaking badly?”
“Yes! We need to put in somewhere and fix the ship right away!”
When I asked about the ship’s condition, the helmsman insisted on emergency repairs. Just as a look of dismay crossed my face, Yi Tae’s voice rose from near my feet.
“Y-Young Master! We—we can repair the ship!”
“You can repair ships?”
I gave him a look that said water bandits repairing ships sounded like a desperate bluff for survival. Yi Tae quickly shouted again.
“W-we have an outstanding shipwright at our base!”
“A shipwright?”
I tilted my head at the unfamiliar term, and the helmsman answered for him.
“A master craftsman who builds ships.”
Yi Tae nodded vigorously.
“Yes, a shipwright. How else do you think we’re so good at sinking ships? It’s because we know them inside and out. Please, t-trust us once! He’s a shipwright from Fujian Province!”
“Fujian Province!? Is that true!?”
“W-why would I lie in a situation like this?”
The helmsman’s face lit up at the mention of Fujian. Finding his reaction odd, I shot him a look demanding an explanation, and he gladly provided one.
“A shipwright from Fujian means one of the finest in the land. Our own ship was built in Fujian. If what this man says is true, he’ll be able to take proper care of her.”
“Ho, is that so?”
When I showed interest, Yi Tae grinned eagerly.
“Young Master, if we repair your ship, could that serve as our gift of apology instead…?”
It sounded like he wanted to substitute ship repairs for the apology gift. Before he could even finish, I nodded and answered.
“Fine. I’ll take that shipwright as your gift of apology.”
It was the perfect apology gift for a 10-to-0 accident, after all.
As we headed toward the water bandits’ base to collect the apology gift and get the ship fixed, the conversation turned to the names of two of my venomous companions.
First up was the baby of Bing and Seol, whose name Sister Seol and Hwa-eun had been debating between “Naeng-i” and “Dong-i.”
“They even saved So-ryong. It’s ridiculous they still don’t have a name. We need to decide right away.”
“True. We can’t keep calling them ‘baby’ forever.”
They’d earned merit by saving me, so remaining nameless was indeed unacceptable.
“So, Dong-i…”
“So, Naeng-i…”
They both had a point, but their opinions remained locked in a deadlock. I shook my head and spoke up.
“Let’s go with the name the baby likes.”
“The baby?”
“The baby?”
“Yes. Call them by whatever name they prefer—not the one either of you prefer.”
As their master I could have simply decided myself, but then Sister Seol and Hwa-eun would never let me hear the end of it. I’d already caused them worry with Wol-yeong’s poison; if I steamrolled this decision on top of that, I’d be thoroughly marked. If the two of them couldn’t agree, the one receiving the name should choose. That way neither of them could complain.
“Baby, do you like the name Naeng-i? Or do you like Dong-i?”
I set Seol and Bing’s baby on the table and asked. The little one tilted its head.
-Kyut?
-Kkuk-ku.
-Ku-uu.
After tilting its head at my question, it listened to something from Seol and Bing, then climbed up onto Hwa-eun’s shoulder to answer.
-Kyuuuu.
The face looked almost like it was smiling. It seemed Dong-i was the preferred choice.
“You like Dong-i?”
-Kyut!
“Why! Naeng-i isn’t bad either!?”
Sister Seol wore a thoroughly disappointed expression, but what could she do when the party in question preferred Dong-i?
And so Dong-i received the name Dong-i.
Next on the chopping block was Wol-yeong. The opinion had been raised that a creature with yang-attribute poison shouldn’t bear a name so steeped in yin energy.
“We should give Wol-yeong a new name too. Wol means moon and Yeong means shadow—both symbols of yin. That doesn’t suit a child who carries yang poison.”
“Right. So-ryong, the name Wol-yeong is an insult to her.”
It was true. Until now I had always given the kids names that matched their appearance or traits. Considering that this one ate fire, a name overflowing with yin energy really didn’t fit.
Cho, can you ask Wol-yeong how she feels about changing her name?
-Chirp!
Through Cho I confirmed Wol-yeong’s wishes and received a clear sense of enthusiasm. Apparently the name given by the nuns who had starved her for ten years had never sat well with her.
I decided to leave her new name to Sister Seol—to ease the disappointment of not getting to name Dong-i.
“Sister Seol, please choose Wol-yeong’s new name.”
“R-really!?”
She had been moping over not naming Naeng-i, but the moment I asked her to name this one her face lit up. After a brief moment of thought she offered a solid suggestion.
“Then how about Hwa-yang?”
“Hwa-yang?”
“Mm. Wol-yeong meant moon-shadow, right? The opposite would be Il-yang, sun’s light, but that sounds too much like a boy’s name. Hwa-yang works for either a boy or a girl—and we still don’t know the gender yet.”
“Hwa-yang, huh…”
Broken down, it meant fire-sun, or blazing sunlight. For a prickly little thing that had sprayed water on nuns, it felt like a perfect fit.
“How do you like Hwa-yang as your new name?”
At my question she wagged her hind legs as if pleased. That settled it—her name would be Hwa-yang.
“She seems to like it too. Sister Seol, I think it’s a fine name as well.”
“Great!”
I nodded to Sister Seol and told her it was a good name. And then something that had slipped by unnoticed suddenly snagged in my mind. I tilted my head, trying to place what felt off, until the oddity I had carelessly overlooked finally surfaced.
Wait a second!? L-legs!?
I rubbed my startled eyes and looked again. In the two days I had been poisoned by her venom, a pair of legs had sprouted right up. Her hind legs were already growing out, cute and tiny.