Kill Me, He Says
"So a sword won't do. Something else, then."
Gam Jideok, vice-leader of the Prosperity Association, felt his lips twitch. The scar running across his mouth made his expression look all the more ferocious.
The blacksmith sensed the strange shift in the air and shuffled a few steps back.
This was killing intent—murderous spirit deliberately unleashed by a martial artist.
It was so savage and oppressive that even men who knew nothing of martial arts could feel it pressing down on them.
Yet Jin Seongun, standing face-to-face with it, wore nothing but calm on his face.
"Come and take it, then. If you're so confident."
Gam Jideok curled the corner of his mouth into a vicious snarl.
He knew the man had trained in martial arts. He'd also exchanged a few casual blows with him earlier and confirmed that his skill was no joke.
And still, he wasn't worried.
He's just a waiter, after all.
He had played nice on the association leader's orders. The leader's martial prowess was only a notch above his own, but honestly, the influence the man's father commanded in the Unorthodox world had frightened him.
Still, watching some waiter brat who hauled liquor around a guesthouse act so insolent was more than he could stomach.
A right-handed swordsman, hmm. Taking his left wrist should be punishment enough.
A nobody who'd picked up scraps of martial arts while working as a waiter.
Himself—a man who had gripped a blade since childhood, crossed life and death for decades, and clawed his way to this seat.
The outcome was obvious.
"Blacksmith, let me borrow a sword."
Before permission even finished falling from the old man's lips, Gam Jideok snatched the iron sword leaning against the wall and closed the distance to Jin Seongun without a shred of warning.
Whee-ing!
A single whistle of cleaving air, and a pale-white arc of steel shot toward Jin Seongun's throat.
The idea was to plant the fear of death within a single exchange, to make his opponent's movements sluggish.
But—
Crack!
The sword punched through the wall behind where Jin Seongun had stood.
Jin Seongun was already standing a step to the side, watching Gam Jideok with those characteristically dry eyes.
Gam Jideok's eyes blinked rapidly.
"What the—?"
He hadn't seen the movement. The man had looked utterly still—so still that Gam Jideok wondered if he'd simply misjudged his own aim.
Muyeongbo—the Shadowless Steps.
The divine art that had transformed a petty thief into the Shadowless Divine Thief, the greatest thief of all recorded history.
While Gam Jideok stood there bewildered,
Jin Seongun let out a small chuckle—a soft psh of a laugh.
He wasn't mocking his opponent. He had simply laughed, struck once more by the strange novelty of the fact that he knew martial arts at all.
A waiter who knows martial arts.
It sounded ridiculous even to himself.
The only problem was that the laugh rubbed Gam Jideok's temper extremely raw.
"You little bastard!"
Face flushing crimson, Gam Jideok poured in strike after strike.
Working as a waiter taught you that all kinds of people existed in this world. Naturally, not everyone respected waiters, and those who walked the Unorthodox path in particular tended to treat them like slaves.
Charitably speaking, they worshipped strength and had no other yardstick for judging a man. Less charitably, they were cowards at heart—weak before the strong and cruel to the weak.
And now a waiter he'd scorned all his life was dodging every one of his strikes. Worse, the man kept snickering between them, as if something were terribly amusing, and the sight made him want to tear that grinning mouth wide open.
Gam Jideok channeled his internal energy so violently that his dantian and meridians hammered like a drum.
Each strike grew heavier, faster.
Yet the sword never touched him.
Some eighteen exchanges had flowed past when,
Jin Seongun stepped back half a pace.
Gam Jideok saw hope. How much stamina could a man who worked inside a cramped guesthouse possibly have?
He's winded. Now I have my chance.
Shrreung—!
But when Jin Seongun calmly raised the Black Peak Sword—Gam Jideok's own blade—his hope shattered.
The man was simply holding the sword in a high guard. Nothing more.
And still, an endless, bottomless dread opened up beneath him.
He had never met a truly great master. But if he ever faced one leagues beyond him, wouldn't it feel exactly like this—that hollow helplessness?
"Your sword is telling me what it wants."
Jin Seongun's voice drifted out, flat and even.
Gam Jideok stood frozen, his mind half gone.
Thud.
Suddenly, his chest grew hot.
He looked down to find the Black Peak Sword—a blade whose original owner he could barely even remember—buried in his sternum.
This time, too, he hadn't seen the waiter move. Not any more than he'd seen him when the man had smiled and slipped past his blade.
"He asked to kill you."
Having calmly relayed the Black Peak Sword's wish, Jin Seongun slowly drew the blade out.
Blood splashed across the floor in a rush.
Gam Jideok's body toppled slowly forward.
Thud!
Jin Seongun stared at the corpse for a moment, then wiped the blood from the Black Peak Sword on the man's clothes.
He felt strange. The sensation of a blade parting bone and flesh felt unfamiliar—and so did the fact that a human being could die this easily.
Beyond that, though, there wasn't much to it. Perhaps because he had spent years as a waiter, watching wicked men cut down good ones time and again.
The death of an evil man simply didn't feel like such a great tragedy.
Jin Seongun, who had been staring at the Black Peak Sword in his hand, shifted his gaze. The blacksmith, who had so brazenly snubbed him earlier, was now hunching his shoulders hard.
Ignoring him entirely, Jin Seongun scratched his neck with an index finger, then gave a small bow.
"I'm afraid I've dirtied your shop. I'll clean this up before I go."
"N-no, no need. I can take care of—"
"Nah."
Cleaning was a waiter's specialty.
Jin Seongun raised a finger and pressed it several times into the dead man's chest.
It was an acupoint-sealing technique learned from Daji, his only female master. Since it worked by driving qi into the body to physically bind the blood vessels, it was effective even on corpses.
With the bleeding stopped, he fetched a rag from a corner of the forge and set about wiping the floor.
A fair amount of blood had spilled in those short moments, so it took no small while.
"Big men bleed more, I suppose."
Watching Jin Seongun mutter that to himself as he mopped up the blood, the old blacksmith found himself thinking that he might be next. That dry, expressionless face—wearing itself over a man he'd just killed—stirred up a strange, creeping fear.
"S-say there."
"Yes?"
Jin Seongun looked up at him.
The blood was mostly cleaned up. His next thought was that he should haul this so-called vice-leader to the yamen and collect himself a nice fat bounty.
"I—I saw nothing. I'm old, and my memory isn't what it was. Once this day is over, I'll forget it all. Who killed whom, who learned martial arts..."
Jin Seongun stared at him steadily.
The old man had apparently put his foot in his mouth without meaning to.
Whatever the blacksmith did afterward was no real concern of his, but word spreading that a waiter had learned martial arts could become a hindrance to business.
"Yes, understood."
Only after Jin Seongun nodded did the old man finally exhale in relief.
Jin Seongun felt somehow guilty and decided he ought to leave quickly. It had clearly been meant as a kindness.
Shfffff.
Gam Jideok—the man every soul in Yichang feared, vice-leader of the Prosperity Association.
And so the sight of a waiter dragging that man's corpse across the floor by its ankles only conjured up an entirely new kind of terror.
The moment he left the forge, Jin Seongun wrapped Gam Jideok's corpse in cloth, spread the Shadowless Steps, and headed straight for the yamen.
Thanks to that, not a soul on the street managed to get a proper look at him.
The yamen was thrown into an uproar.
Even the lowliest constable guarding the gates knew Gam Jideok's name by heart. And now the man had come back as a corpse.
Dragged in by the very waiter who, only days ago, had hauled in two of the association's martial artists.
Head Constable Hwang Myeongseok immediately ordered a gag order.
The leader of the Prosperity Association was not a man of mild temperament. If word spread that his vice-leader had died at a waiter's hands, the order of the commercial district would collapse—and a leader displeased by that collapse would come calling for the head constable.
Having clamped his underlings' mouths shut, Hwang moved to arrest Jin Seongun.
There was no other charge, of course. But he could hardly ignore a request from the leader of the Prosperity Association.
"You there..."
Hwang Myeongseok met Jin Seongun's eyes.
And his words simply died in his throat.
This was a man brazen enough to kill the vice-leader inside the association's own territory and carry the body in. No—brazen wasn't nearly the word. Half out of his mind was closer to the truth.
What if this lunatic snaps and comes for me?
Who would stop him? The Prosperity Association's leader wasn't here. And the men standing around him couldn't hold back a mad waiter who'd already killed Gam Jideok.
"Is something the matter, sir?"
When the head constable stood there with his mouth shut, Jin Seongun asked. But Hwang Myeongseok simply couldn't bring himself to arrest the man.
So after long agonizing, what finally came out of his mouth was this:
"You... clearly hold this county's public order in very high regard."
What utter nonsense.
Jin Seongun just stared at him.
Oblivious or indifferent, the head constable pushed on—handing over the bounty money and spouting more rubbish about looking forward to his continued cooperation.
Jin Seongun's steps had grown oddly light.
The change was so subtle that no one could possibly have noticed, but there was no mistaking it—he was just a little bit excited.
"Next time, I hope the leader himself comes."
The bounty on Gam Jideok had been enormous. It made the two men he'd turned in before look like pocket change.
With this much money, he could launch his business in earnest and still have enough liquor and ingredients to last at least a year.
And if business went poorly—well, maybe another six months on top of that.
"Best not to entertain gloomy thoughts."
Truthfully, Jin Seongun had been under strain lately. Not fear of the Prosperity Association—far from it. Even when armed men came with blades pointed at his face, even when that vice-leader was swinging a sword around wildly, he hadn't wavered in the slightest.
It was simply that he had opened his very first shop, and he worried every single day about whether it might actually succeed.
"Food first."
His neighbor Noh Sangwon had the day off today. Since he'd be eating alone anyway, Jin Seongun planned to boil noodles—practice, really.
He'd have to rely on a hired cook for a while yet, but his ultimate dream was to cook and sell food with his own hands. If he could manage it, he'd handle the waiter's role too.
Waiter, cook, and innkeeper, all in one man—the greatest innkeeper under heaven.
"Heh heh."
He was wearing an unusually sinister grin as he set about boiling the noodles when—
"Is the waiter in?!"
A remarkably vigorous voice rang out.
What kind of customer came looking for a waiter in a voice brimming with such resolve?
Curious, Jin Seongun stepped outside.
There stood a gaunt, scrawny man, somewhere around forty. He showed no trace of martial training whatsoever.
Which meant—
"Looking for a cook, perhaps?"
Fixed to the inn's outer wall was a notice that read: Cook wanted—best pay in the trade.
Any cook worth his salt couldn't help but ask about those terms at least once.
At Jin Seongun's question, the man scratched his head awkwardly.
Jin Seongun's spirits sank.
"Ah—you're a customer, then. We haven't opened for business yet. Please come again another time."
"That's not it..."
The man pulled out an empty chair and sat down. He seemed to have something to say, so Jin Seongun took the seat across from him.
Suddenly, the man began tapping the table with his index finger, visibly tense, and then spoke in a resolute tone.
"I hear you killed our vice-leader."
"Ah. You're from the Prosperity Association, then?"
"Yes, well, formally speaking. But I truly only came to talk, so please don't misunderstand—"
Jin Seongun rose from his seat.
The Prosperity Association. The Prosperity Association. That damned Prosperity Association. Why did they all have to harass an honest commoner who was just trying to run a business?
Besides, this one hadn't even trained in martial arts, so his bounty would be nonexistent, or next to it.
"A chat sounds lovely."
Jin Seongun nodded, walked to the entrance, and slid the door half shut.
The scrawny man's face went pale.
"N-no, I only came because I had a question to ask!"
"You know the custom, don't you?"
"..."
"When you ask a waiter for anything—any answer at all—the rule is to slip him at least a single copper coin. I can't imagine what you mean to ask, but..."
Click.
The bolt slid firmly into place.
The guesthouse dimmed. Jin Seongun turned back to the man and went on, tone unchanged.
"Depending on what you ask, the price may run somewhat... expensive."
He wouldn't kill him, of course.
Sword Immortal had told him that no matter how wicked, a man who knew no martial arts should be spared whenever possible.
Whenever possible.