How Can There Be Heaven's Aura?
"Khk—!"
The blow to his gut dropped Dan Chuyeon to one knee. The earthen pillar that had struck his stomach melted away, returning to nature as if it had never been raised at all.
"Rise. This is not finished."
"......Yes!"
His master, Hong Yumin, shook out her sleeve. Countless droplets spilled from the cloth and drove in like the teeth of a comb—water-drop bullets that could punch clean through stone, come to turn their target into a honeycomb.
"Hup!"
Dan Chuyeon thrust out a hand and seized every last droplet. Then he turned them about and sent them gently back to his master.
"Their force has been halved. Like this, they would not stir a fallen leaf."
Hong Yumin flicked the hem of her robe once. A blade of wind rose behind her, erased the droplets, and lifted Chuyeon's body, flinging him backward.
He struck the wall with a thud, coughed the air from his lungs, and collapsed. Face buried in the dirt, his arms twitched.
"You have regressed."
Hong Yumin bit the words off at her fallen disciple. Chuyeon chewed his lip and could not raise his head.
"Your heart is full of stray thoughts. Are you still keeping the Arctic inside you?"
"........."
"If you do not wish to speak, that is enough. I understand. For you, not yet ripened, it must have been a cruel experience."
"Master, I......"
Had that understanding itself stung him? Chuyeon clutched at the dirt.
"I still cannot forget that sight."
"What do you mean."
"......All of it."
The feel of killing the replications. The brutality of the battlefield, and the isolation of it. Nature's warning of death, and the killing intent lying in wait on every side. Humanity's sins, and a wall too vast ever to overcome.
For Dan Chuyeon, the experience itself had been a shock, harsh enough to remain as trauma. After he came home, nightmares tormented him for days. Above all, even knowing they were replications, the sensation of parting human flesh with his own hands would not leave him. He washed and washed, and the smell of blood would not come off. With his mind unsteady, his body failed him in turn, and in only a few days he had grown gaunt.
Hong Yumin read her disciple's condition at a glance, and so she did not drive him hard, training or not.
"Disciple. Your father has told you, so you know. A great war is coming."
Chuyeon's breath caught in his throat.
Only yesterday Dan Miryu had returned from TERA, gathered everyone, and laid bare the Prophet's prophecy. Within it was a line that pointed at Dan Chuyeon, heavy with meaning.
Nature must fulfill its role.
"......Master."
He looked up at Hong Yumin, his eyes trembling.
"Can I... can I really do it?"
"Not as you are now. Prophecy is not always absolute. You may fail."
"........."
Crushing pressure and a sense of duty settled over his shoulders like a load he did not know how to set down. It felt as if the future of the world had been laid upon him alone.
Hong Yumin sighed inwardly.
His mind is shaken, so he goes and frets even over things he need not.
She thought of comforting him, then chose not to interfere. Guiding a clumsy child was an adult's share. Breaking the shell was the child's. If he could not find an answer, she could press him sharply then.
"We stop here today. Go in and rest easy. Do not bury yourself too deep."
"......Yes."
With her power she washed the grime from him herself, and sent him home.
"Krung. Krung."
San-gun came and rubbed his face against her leg. Hong Yumin stroked the nape of his neck.
"I will go and meet them, even if you do not hurry me."
"Krrrrung."
"Please do not scold me too harshly. I ought to have time to steel myself, shouldn't I?"
"Kwerung."
"......Very well. Sooner would be better."
Her gaze turned toward the house across the way—the house where Phantom lived. A bond of several hundred years was waiting to be met.
Hong Yumin entered the door code. She opened the door as if the place were familiar, and there in the hall was Tsushima Kana, wiping the floor.
"Oh? You've come?"
Dressed in a blend of maid's uniform and shrine-maiden robes, Kana dried her hands on her apron and welcomed her.
"Yes. There is someone I must see."
"Shall I prepare tea?"
"No need. It is a private matter. I will be done and gone shortly."
"Of course."
Kana returned to her work. A robot vacuum trailed after her.
"Mraaaong."
"No. Did you not break one the last time?"
"Mraong......"
Hong Yumin stopped San-gun—the vacuum had stirred his hunting instinct—and passed down the hall toward the back garden.
An eastern dragon lay coiled there, breathing soft and even in her sleep.
"I have been waiting, Lady Hong Yumin."
Sipsado, who had been beside the dragon, bent deeply at the waist.
"You have borne much."
"Not at all. If it is for the Dragon Mother, it is a burden I can carry."
"Is that so......?"
"Yes."
A brief silence passed between Hong Yumin and Sipsado.
"......I do not know how I ought to treat you."
"You may treat me as you always have. My station is no higher than that housekeeper's."
"That will not do. You are......"
Are you not the daughter of my own bond?
Before Sipsado's blunt gaze, the words would not leave her.
"Do you resent me?"
"If I had resented you, Lady Hong Yumin, would you not have noticed?"
Sipsado came to stand beside her.
"That my mother suffered is my responsibility, and the dragon's fault. It is not yours. Whom would I even resent? I took the saving of my mother as my cause, and as a Heavenly Criminal I earned that grudge myself."
She stepped away and murmured, brief and low.
"All I wish is that the two of you meet again well. I do not think it would be too late to begin from there."
"I have overstepped. I will withdraw."
The sliding door between yard and house rattled shut. Only San-gun, Hong Yumin, and the dragon remained.
"Jua...... I was terribly rude."
As if she had been waiting, the dragon lifted eyelids sheathed in scale.
"You were awake?"
"I have been awake since you arrived......"
Her whiskers shivered.
"Hundreds of years. Time has flowed on, heartless as ever."
"I feel it too."
"Pu-hu-hu."
The dragon laughed, nostrils flaring.
"Meeting a past so old, I cannot grow used to it. The talks in our memory were never this grown-up...... Why has that little child become so large?"
"If anyone was startled, it was I, more so......"
Hong Yumin's brow tightened for a moment. Then she opened the tender subject.
"That day. How did you live?"
The day Heaven itself passed judgment. How could one mere girl have survived?
The dragon gave a bitter smile.
"......Because I ran, and uglily. What else is there? I abandoned even a child, just so I might live alone."
"It happened because I acted as I pleased."
Hong Yumin ground her teeth.
"The raccoon, Yeomsu, Seokche, Grandfather......"
"Blame yourself that way and there is no end. It was an accident, and a fate already appointed."
"But the others might have lived."
"In the end, that is only the realm of what-if."
The dragon rose from her stiff coils until her eyes were level with Hong Yumin's.
"You have no cause for guilt. Heaven has already paid your sin in full."
And—
"I do not resent you. Nor would the people of the village."
"Ah......"
Hong Yumin pressed at the corners of her eyes. The stone that had weighed on one corner of her heart seemed to lift and drift away.
"Th-thank you. Yongnyeo."
"At last you call me by my name."
"I am sorry. I had no shame."
"Only your frame has grown. Nothing inside has changed. Still a child, so full of shyness."
Hong Yumin drew close and embraced Yongnyeo's face in her arms. Yongnyeo yielded herself to those small hands.
"A fine sight, isn't it, San-gun?"
"Krung. Krung."
"Don't just stand there with no sense of tact—get out, you say? I came because I have business of my own......"
"Kra!"
"San-gun, please let go of my head. Your breath reeks. Don't you brush your teeth?"
Hong Yumin and Yongnyeo glanced, sidelong, at the racket beyond them, and neither said a word.
"What are you doing?"
"Ah. Miss Hong Yumin. Did the reunion go well?"
"I asked what you are doing."
"Haha. Somehow, without meaning to, San-gun got my head in his teeth."
San-gun was chewing Phantom's head as if it were a stick of gum.
"You rotten thing!"
Whud—Hong Yumin drove a kick up between his legs.
"Ghk! Not there!"
Phantom collapsed, tasting the particular agony of a man.
"......Is it all right to treat him so freely?"
"You may beat him like a sandbag."
At that preposterous answer, Yongnyeo's face soured.
"Do you realize? That man is......"
"I know. Do not fret. We know as much as you do."
"Hah......"
She patted him, twice.
"Get up. If this is not proper business, I will bury you upside down."
"Miss Mi Soryeong asked me to pass it on—if you're willing, she wants you to go out on an outing with that dragon......"
"You weren't picking up, so I played messenger......"
"Tsk. You have saved your neck."
"Waaah!"
"Why are you pleased? Buried is buried."
"That's a completely different story!"
"I will bury only your face."
"That's too cruel!"
Before Hong Yumin could seize Phantom by the collar and haul him up, the doorbell chimed.
"Hm......?"
Phantom tilted his head.
"Strange. No one was meant to come."
"This is......"
Hong Yumin, Yongnyeo, and San-gun flinched as one, their eyes snapping toward the front door.
Hong Yumin flung Phantom aside and ran for the entrance.
Kana was just opening the door to receive the guest. At the sight of a woman with her hood drawn up, Hong Yumin's eyes went wide.
"You......"
"So I have not come to the wrong house."
The woman pushed back her hood as she spoke. Blonde hair swayed in the sunlight.
"It is a pleasure to meet you. I am Aurine."