A Birthday Gift of the World
When Ja Unhak spoke of a year, he meant the time they would need to build a boat.
They had no real shipwright’s craft among them, yet the work still fared better than their years of studying formations. Half a wreck remained—a vessel that had once been well made—and they had more than enough timber and fittings to repair it.
“Looks like another ship went down,” someone would say whenever wreckage washed ashore. Most of what the waves delivered were shattered remnants of hulls. That was reason enough that they had never tried to flee by sea.
“Someone must have come to rescue us and been swallowed by the surf.”
After the year Ja Gangcheon was born, nothing more ever drifted in.
“All right. Let’s begin.”
The couple, long practiced in careful study, set about reducing the wreck and restoring it as a smaller craft. The original had been so vast that materials for a scaled-down ship were plentiful. What they lacked was certainty that anything they built could survive the waves—so they tested it again and again. They floated rafts. They went into the sea themselves.
“We’ve never made it all the way through,” Ja Unhak said.
No one knew how far those hellish swells stretched before calm water began. They could only judge by the dense gray fog that hung beyond the breakers.
A year of life-risking trials and labor passed that way.
At last came Ja Gangcheon’s fifteenth birthday.
On a stretch of beach the waves never reached, the boat the couple had built lay waiting. Reduced to a tenth of the original’s size, it held food and water enough for the family.
“We need ballast,” Ja Unhak said.
The hull required proper weight for stable balance.
“We’ll have to return them to their rightful owners eventually.”
“What are you talking about? That’s our nest egg.”
“Do you mean to buy the entire world? Nest egg, indeed.”
They loaded one hundred eight weapons, thirty books tightly wrapped in leaves, and twelve wooden chests. Every piece was a martial treasure in its own right—yet if the family’s escape failed, all of it would vanish into the sea.
“Are we moving house now?” Ja Gangcheon asked, bright and innocent.
“We are. For your birthday, I’ll give you the world.”
“Son, the moment we arrive, we eat something delicious first.”
Of everything she had never been able to give him, So Cheongbi regretted most that she had never cooked him a truly fine meal. Now they were bound for a place where she could do all of it.
“Come on. Change your clothes.”
She handed each of them a set she had made.
“Sewn from the clothes of dead men. The underworld’s reapers will think you’re already gone and leave you alone.”
Guessing whose clothes they had been was not difficult.
“Mother, you look so pretty.”
“My son looks pretty too. Who gave birth to such a handsome boy, I wonder?”
“Father looks splendid as well.”
So Cheongbi’s skill was excellent, and the fabric had been fine to begin with; at a glance they might have been a wealthy family setting out for a pleasure cruise.
“It’s time.”
Having stolen that last ease while they dressed, they drew their tension tight again. Because they would board the boat, they ate nothing.
Swaaah!
Just as the sun rose, the waves were at their lowest—lowest being relative; they still reared and thrashed like the gates of hell.
“Let’s go.”
The family pushed the boat together.
Splash!
The hull scraped over black gravel and slid into the sea. The surf kept trying to drive it back onto the beach.
Even inside the fog, the current pushes toward the island.
As if determined never to allow escape, a boat left alone would drift home again. To force a path the other way, they would have to drive it with inner force. For three days they had taken spiritual elixirs and gathered their internal energy. Everything had been for this moment.
“Get aboard.”
Once he saw his wife and son move from the deck into the cabin, Ja Unhak drove the stern with all the strength the hull could bear without shattering.
Please…!
Pushed by his inner force, the boat charged the waves.
Ja Gangcheon knew as well.
We could die.
How could he not? He had played in these waters until the age of fifteen.
If I say I’m scared, I’ll really be scared.
That was his own way of finding courage. But the instant he faced the raging sea, he understood how pitiful those resolutions were.
Swaah! Swaah!
Waves struck the hull and rose like white giants, then crashed down as a stinging, salt-laced deluge.
Crash!
Clinging to a pillar in the cabin, Ja Gangcheon’s body was flung toward the ceiling.
Crash!
Before he could even groan from the impact, he slammed back to the floor.
Crack!
A surge smashed through the cabin door and struck him full in the face.
Wheeee—!
A soul-tearing ringing filled his ears; his pupils went slack and threatened to roll back.
“Son!”
His mother’s voice—always warm, now sharp as a blade—cut through the tinnitus.
“Hold on!”
Ja Unhak burst from the deck into the cabin and unleashed a lion’s roar. His father’s voice, laden with internal energy, steadied Ja Gangcheon’s trembling heart. The sea, however, granted the family no respite.
Huh?
The boat heaved high and dropped; something slammed the entire cabin.
Crack!
“Get clear!”
Ja Unhak seized his wife’s and son’s hands, leapt, and drove them up through the collapsing ceiling.
So Ja Gangcheon found himself standing on the open deck—and saw where he was.
Inside a dark, smothering fog. A world so black even the sky was gone.
On the violently pitching deck, one thought rose in him.
A nightmare.
He would walk this nightmare until it killed him. Beyond the fog, the reaper of death must be waiting.
“Gangcheon. Come to my side.”
“Son. Don’t leave your mother’s side.”
Before him and behind him rose the two most trustworthy pillars in the world. In front stood his mother; at his back, his father braced him while driving the boat with internal force.
Ah…!
The shadow of despair that had briefly settled over a fifteen-year-old boy vanished.
“Hold on!”
“Son! You can do this!”
“I’m all right!”
They endured as one. The boat that climbed each wave was precarious, and the three clinging to the deck were more precarious still.
Crash!
Once.
Crash!
Again.
They weathered the blows.
Swaah!
Surges that scoured the deck raw they endured with clenched teeth.
Please—just end already!
Crisis piled on crisis until fury almost outran fear.
Then—
Huh?
The world went suddenly dark. The gray fog that already choked the air thickened as if night had fallen; a heavy shadow dropped over everything.
All three lifted their heads at once.
An enormous wave. Nothing like what had come before. A wall of water that looked ready to swallow the boat whole roared in and swept the entire deck.
Despair closed in.
In that instant, the pillar guarding Ja Gangcheon’s back shot forward.
“Husband!”
“Father!”
Leaving their cries behind him, Ja Unhak drew up his internal force and faced the oncoming wave.
KWA-RUMMM!
Both hands, charged with a lifetime’s cultivation, met the water.
Sssshhhraaak!
Amazingly, the wave split and peeled aside as if cut by a blade.
We did it.
The thought had barely formed when—
At the trailing edge of the wave Ja Unhak was still parting—
“Guh—!”
His internal energy could not hold to the end. The last fringe of the split wave seized him and carried him away.
“Father!”
Ja Gangcheon scrambled up in shock. Far off, he saw his father swept into the thrashing surf.
Yet the wave, having spent its final strength, began to quiet. And with it, the current that had always driven toward the island reversed. Even without Ja Unhak shoving from the stern with internal force, the boat began to drift the other way of its own accord.
No one could rejoice.
“Son. Listen carefully. Mother is going to save Father and return to the island. We’ll find you on our own—so you must never come back.”
“Mother?”
Crack!
So Cheongbi tore the broadest plank free from the deck.
“Son. Trust only me.”
Taah!
She flung the deck-board into the air and, in a flash of lightness skill, landed upon it.
“Mother!”
Astonished, Ja Gangcheon raced across the deck. By the time he reached the stern, she had already stepped several times across the waves and was hurling the plank toward the pale trace of his father.
“Please…”
For the first time in his life, Ja Gangcheon prayed. When he was very small and ill, he had watched his mother fold her hands and pray beside him.
Had that desperate wish been heard?
Through the roaring surf came a voice laden with internal energy.
“Son! Don’t worry!”
“We’ll find you soon!”
Distant and faint—but Ja Gangcheon heard every word.
“I’ll wait!”
He shouted with all the strength he had.
He looked at the stars—not for their beauty, but to make certain of his course.
“Watch the brightest star and keep left.”
The method his father had taught him. Follow the stars, and he would reach the mainland his parents had spoken of every day.
Perhaps the heavens pitied a fifteen-year-old boy’s ordeal. The stars burned unusually bright, and the sea lay calm.
“Can the world really be this quiet?”
That amazed him most of all. On nights when the island’s noise had kept him awake, his mother had sometimes pressed his vital points to let him sleep.
“You’re a kind sea.”
Even a wreck of a boat could cross water like this.
“Mother and Father will be all right.”
It stung that they had not come with him—but the last cries he had heard had been full of certainty. That was enough. His parents always kept their promises.
Three days later, a different kind of fear found him.
The furious waves that had tried to swallow him whole had been a destructive, immediate terror. This fear was not the same.
Gentle swells. Soft moonlight. And a dense, endless dark.
The dread of the open ocean was quiet and relentless. By the time he recognized it, his body was already trembling.
The feeling of being cast alone into the world.
There’s no one left to protect me.
The mere fact that his parents were not beside him made Ja Gangcheon’s heart shrink tight.
Have nights always been this long?
A night spent wide-eyed on the sea called up almost every unpleasant feeling he knew.
Another night passed. After the gray of dawn came a magnificent sunrise. On the first day it had been beautiful; now it looked like the face of heaven come to judge him.
Extreme anxiety crashed over him—and instead of folding, Ja Gangcheon squared his shoulders and stood tall. Then he poured every scrap of strength into a shout.
“Fear is an illusion the heart creates!”
His father’s words.
“I’m going to fight my own heart—and win!”
His mother’s counsel.
He was still shouting at the sun when—
“Huh?”
Against the unchanging expanse, a small shadow appeared. Beneath the rising sun’s fire, something was writhing on the water—an object floating on the sea.
“A ship!”
And a very large one.
Ja Gangcheon hurried to the stern and, just as his father had done, sent a surge of force into the water. His boat began to cut against the current; the distant shadow grew steadily closer.
“Whoa!”
It was enormous. Along a railing high as a fortress wall, he could even make out human faces.
“Wow! Other people!”
At his cry, the figures on the railing cocked their heads.
“Who the hell are you?!”
Fortunately, the words were ones he could understand. Excited, Ja Gangcheon called back.
“I’m Ja Gangcheon! I’m heading for the mainland!”
A rough-bearded man in his mid-forties bellowed in answer.
“We’ll drop a rope—wait there!”
Then it happened.
A small face appeared at the rail and looked down at him. At the sight of someone near his own age, Ja Gangcheon’s expression brightened further. Something was wrong, though.
The scrawny boy of similar years moved his lips toward Ja Gangcheon—yet no voice carried.
Is he just quiet?
When the boy repeated the same words with a blank face, Ja Gangcheon focused on his mouth.
Run. They’re pirates.
He had only just made out the meaning when—
“You little brat! What do you think you’re doing?!”
Someone’s scolding cut in, and the boy vanished from sight.
In his place a thick rope came down and thumped onto Ja Gangcheon’s ruined boat.
“Looks like the Dragon King has finally answered all the treasure we’ve offered him. The boat’s worthless—so you’ll pay with your body.”
Two men dropped onto Ja Gangcheon’s deck.