Crimson Twilight
It was from when I was little.
From when I was very little.
There was a place I always stopped on my way back, scrambling home to meet the dusk after watching, from afar, the girl from the oil shop I secretly loved as she helped with her family's chores.
After winding through the alleys and turning the third corner, there was a rice shop with graffiti scrawled across its wall.
Next to it stood a noodle shop.
I had money for noodles.
But if I spent it on a single meal, I would go hungry for the rest of the day.
Still, the owner must have taken pity on a child like me — if I handed him a single cheap coin, he would let me drink a bowl of the noodle broth.
I would stir in half a spoonful of soy sauce, blow on it gently, and hold it in my mouth as I drank.
Sometimes a scrap of green onion or the head of an anchovy used for the stock would land on my tongue, and I remember how good that felt.
I would chew until my mouth was a mess of saliva.
Sitting near the entrance, I watched the various people who came into the restaurant.
I yearned for the outside world.
That day, as far as I remembered, was no different from any other.
I heard this place is famous for its food, even if it looks run-down!
This is nothing! It's on me!
A group entered amid a noisy clamor.
At their center stood a handsome young man in splendid clothes, his skin pure white.
A martial artist, huh.
A fine sword hung at his waist.
On either side were two refined young ladies who clearly came from some noble family — the kind of people someone like me would never cross paths with in an entire lifetime.
The noodle shop owner rushed over so fast he nearly lost his shoes answering them.
They seemed to have plenty of money.
They ordered things I had never even heard of without hesitation, and the owner frantically wrote everything down.
Everyone in the shop was staring at them, and the young man shrugged his shoulders as if savoring the attention.
That was the first time I realized this shabby noodle shop had so many different dishes — and the first time I truly witnessed the power of money and status.
Shopkeeper, take this.
What that young master tossed out so casually was a silver coin.
Something he set down so lightly was what I would earn only by cutting wood and burning charcoal myself half to death for an entire year.
We were in the same space, yet it felt as though we lived in different worlds.
Suddenly I thought I was envious.
At the same time I wondered what effort they had made to live like that, and I believed I would never have any connection to that scenery for the rest of my life.
I thought I would never have any relationship with such beautiful women, such precious food, or such connections.
"Happy birthday, Young Master."
A woman in white — which suited her beautifully — said to the man with the brightest smile in the world.
Happy birthday…?
It was the first time I had ever heard those words.
……
…
.
Wings beat against the air in a spray of water.
It was a magnificent sound.
Hundreds of waterfowl took flight at once.
I opened my eyes.
Sometimes when you sleep too deeply, you open your eyes for a moment and don't know where you are — the memories from before sleep fail to connect, and you are left dazed.
That used to happen often when I was young.
But as I grew older, and especially after I began learning martial arts, it almost never happened. Yet for the first time in a long while I felt that way, looking around in confusion.
Where am I. What was I doing.
The dream I had just been having and the reality before my eyes tangled together until I could not tell where the dream ended and the waking world began.
I kept my head bowed for a while, clutching my forehead.
A cool chill from the bare earth seeped up through my backside.
A warm yet cool red twilight, together with the drone of cicadas, announced the midsummer sunset.
The world was filled with dusk.
Whenever I thought back on the beginning of my journey through the martial world, that scenery was always this sunset light.
The beginning had been so,
and so had the end.
Even the most vivid memories were of twilight and dawn.
No one had watched over me. It was a path I had walked alone.
You did well.
Suddenly someone came to mind.
I wish you'd just die already—.
Someone else came to mind.
I wonder when he will come.
Someone from an even more distant memory came to mind.
"You slept for about two hours. You always suffered from nightmares, so when I saw you sleeping so soundly for once, I deliberately didn't wake you…."
Beneath the warm sunset light, a massive black dog sat before me, staring quietly.
"Is something wrong?"
"…."
I raised my right hand, roughened by harsh training.
I felt my cheek.
"Ah."
I quietly wiped away the tears that had fallen.
"Why are you crying."
"I don't know. Me either…. Something must have gotten in my eye."
I spoke in a hoarse voice.
"Host…."
Mumyeong's black tail slowly swept across the ground.
"…Never mind."
He never said more than necessary.
He simply gazed at the world in silence with his smoldering red eyes.
"If you've rested enough, shall we switch? I may not need as much as you, Host, but I do require regular rest. I should sleep as well."
I looked around.
"Yeah."
"Understood. Also, while you were sleeping I briefly checked the surroundings. Nothing particularly dangerous, so you can rest easy."
The black dog sank into the earth as if the ground had swallowed him, and vanished.
I walked out through the shallow ford that came up to my instep, the water reflecting the sunset.
The water pooled in the ford was clear and clean.
Above it, clouds dyed red drifted in soft, heavy shapes, mirrored with perfect transparency.
I looked at the sky, then back at the water's surface.
I could not tell where the sky ended and the earth began.
I looked around.
The horizon and the waterline met, and far beyond, trees stood sparsely.
I looked back.
Together with the dense forest, the cave atop the cliff I had come from looked tiny in the distance.
"It's like another world."
With Mumyeong asleep as well, I was completely alone.
In this vast, expansive world, I could not sense a single human presence.
Everything was red.
The sky was red, and the water's surface reflecting it was red.
Even my own skin, warmly lit, was dyed red.
Black clothes fluttering, I walked forward, leaving ripple-shaped footprints with each step.
Ahead lay a massive temple city built of piled red earth.
I kept walking to the steady rhythm of water underfoot.
Midway I looked back.
I had clearly been walking, yet the traces of my path were vanishing along with the ripples, leaving no sign I had passed.
I remembered walking the endless prairie road with Eun Seollyeong.
To me, who had said I was a being who would someday disappear, she had told me that for this moment at least, she was vividly here beside me — and that I should focus on that.
So Yeomgyo had said she was afraid of death.
She was a woman who fought without the slightest hesitation when battle came, yet she had told me honestly and calmly that she feared dying.
She had said that before death, every person reveals their true self.
"Where exactly am I drifting toward."
I found myself wondering that.
"What I want isn't absolute supremacy, nor to be the richest man alive, nor absolute power. Just ordinary…. I mean. I mean…."
My throat closed up.
"From some point on, meeting someone I love and building a happy family in my own home — that simple thing… feels to me as impossible as reaching the realm of the Wheel of Reincarnation."
My eyes returned to their usual look, like a black winter lake under frost.
"All I want is to live ordinarily, so why is that so hard. Is it like this for everyone. Is reality originally like this. Is growing up originally like this…? Then am I still just a child whose body grew big."
There was no one to answer.
Even Mumyeong, who would normally say something, was asleep.
I walked endlessly forward, leaving regular footprints on the waves where clouds floated in the red twilight.
"…If I keep walking, someday I'll find the answer on this path, right? I always have so far."
That was the conclusion I reached in the end.
At last the long ford ended, and I set my first foot on the stone floor of the temple piled from earth.
The moisture from my footprint climbed onto the bone-dry earthen bricks in the exact shape of my sole, then was absorbed completely.
I took in the scent.
A faint smell of iron.
Mixed among the smell of earth, it was unmistakably the smell of metal.
I also heard the regular sound of steel meshing together.
"What on earth is that sound."
I tried to recall something that made a similar noise, but nothing came easily to mind.
Wandering between the ghost temples, I followed the sound of steel, searching this way and that between the buildings.
"Was this a place where high monks trained during the heyday of the White Lotus Demon Sect."
At first I saw countless stone pagodas of the kind found at ordinary temples, but built by baking and stacking red earth.
But the further inward I went, the more it took the form of one enormous temple complex.
Far on the horizon, beneath the eternally unsetting sunset, the face of a half-collapsed Buddha gazed quietly downward.
The sound of steel grew louder the further I advanced.
Mumyeong had said there was nothing dangerous nearby, but Mumyeong's manifested form was centered on my body, with a maximum range of at most twenty jang. And I had already passed twenty jang long ago.
This was a place Mumyeong had not surveyed, and Mumyeong, who would have sensed danger in advance, was asleep.
Right now I had to rely entirely on my own senses.
Judging by the secret caves I had encountered before, every secret cave had some existence that served as a gatekeeper for that place.
And every single one of them had been formidable.
Of course I was incomparably stronger now than I had been then, but the opponent was the White Lotus Demon Sect.
The era in which that sect had existed was a completely different age from the weakened martial world of today, and even then the White Lotus Demon Sect had been the strongest force — the mother of the Blood Sect and the Demon Sect, a still-veiled band of fanatical madmen.
Complacency was forbidden.
Ahead I saw a crumbling temple wall.
I quickly approached the wall and hid my body in its shadow.
Further ahead was an entrance that seemed to lead properly into the temple courtyard.
What now?
Aside from the steel noise coming from far away, I still sensed no human presence whatsoever.
It was eerie how thoroughly I was the only living, moving thing here.
It almost felt like swimming alone through twilight in a dream.
Part of me wanted to shout and stride boldly through the entrance with my arms spread wide.
No. Still.
After a brief hesitation, I decided safety came first.
In that case.
Though I sensed no presence, just as when I had infiltrated the Ju household, I resolved to approach as if someone lived here — in the form of a stealth infiltration.
Before that, I slowly took stock of the surrounding forms.
I examined materials and textures.
I felt the wind.
In the distance temple roofs flickered into view now and then, but from this low ground they were hard to see.
I turned my head.
On one side of the wall stood a massive tree, blackened and withered dry, silhouetted against the twilight sky.
I laid my palm on the wall I was leaning against.
When I gripped the wall, the red earth crumbled and spilled down.
…In that case.
I took off my shoes.
I unwrapped the bandages on my hands.
I pulled off the outer martial robe that had been hanging from my shoulders.
I set down everything that might weigh me down or get in the way, making myself as light as possible.
I drew a deep breath.
I felt the bone-dry red earth with my bare toes and gripped it—
My body shimmered like a dancing shadow in the twilight and in an instant leapt up and began to run.
I spun in midair and landed atop the wall. The moment I landed I raced along the roof tiles without pause.
The blackened dead giant tree came into view.
I kicked off straight upward.
I stepped on the very tip of a branch no thicker than a little finger.
At that force, a single dry leaf hanging on the giant tree's branch fell away.
Behind me as I flipped through the air, the red sunset cast a deep black shadow.
In that instant when I seemed to pause, suspended in the air, my eyes swept rapidly across the full landscape.
One, three, seven…! The path is…!
Confirming with my eyes the typical temple structure that grew larger as it rose, I sketched the optimal route in my mind.
My briefly floating body plummeted under gravity.
I curled my knees and spun.
Ahead I saw a temple with a large hole in its roof.
I landed on that roof.
Just before my big toe touched the old roof tile, a chill ran through me.
It'll break!
The moment I felt it I yanked my foot up as if snatching it away.
As I pulled my foot back I set both arms on the surface, spreading all five fingers of each hand and pressing them gently onto the old, crumbling tiles.
From my forearms through my biceps, triceps, pectorals, teres major, and latissimus, the brakes engaged in sequence, and the speed of my falling body dropped sharply.
Finally the tip of my big toe touched the edge of a thin roof tile.
A fine hairline crack appeared on the red earth tile.
Before my face, through the gaping hole in the roof, I could look into the dust-filled interior of the temple.
Cold sweat beaded on my chin.
I muttered softly.
"Hoo. That was close."
Dirt dust fell.
I looked down.
"…."
Below the hole, a high monk in a red demon mask, holding a rusted guillotine blade, was looking quietly up at me.