First Among Women
“You knew?”
So-yul's grin turned impish.
“What, were you trying to announce yourself? The sound of you shouldering through the bushes was just about thunderous.”
“Ahem. My apologies. It was not that I thought little of you, nor that I doubted your skill and hid myself away...”
“I know. You meant to step in if anything dangerous happened.”
“If it offended you, then I shall apologize.”
So-yul's eyes went round.
“Why would it offend me?”
“Hm? Well — you did tell me to keep out of your affairs, and yet here I came all the same...”
“I never said any such thing. All I said was that since these problems came about because of me, it's right that I deal with them. I never once refused your help.”
Caught mid-word, Ja-un cast his mind back to that conversation. So it had, he supposed.
“Besides — we're friends. Friends are supposed to help each other when things get hard. Aren't they?”
At the smile curving her lips again, Ja-un went blank for a moment before shaking his head.
“A smile like that, on a face like a blood-drenched demon — it doesn't suit you in the least. Come here, then. We must get you cleaned up.”
Drawing a clean cloth from his robe, he raised it toward her face — and stopped short.
Oh dear. I should have handed her the cloth. Why am I the one wiping her face?
But it was rather too late, in the present circumstances, to withdraw his hand and tell her to do it herself. And so his touch, as he wiped at So-yul's cheeks, was as careful as one handling fragile porcelain.
Finally unable to bear it, So-yul snatched the cloth away with an exasperated flick and scrubbed roughly at her face.
“If you're going to wipe someone's face, wipe it properly.”
“Ahem.”
Unable to hide his embarrassment beneath her grumbling, Ja-un coughed dryly, once and again, and changed the subject.
“Sparing those men — I'd say that was well done.”
“Honestly, I was going to kill every last one of them?”
“That was part of why I kept watch, truth be told. Kill enough people and you grow numb, and there are warriors who wake one day to find they've turned slaughter demon. One must never take a life while drunk, you see. A warrior needs standards of her own.”
At that, So-yul's eyes narrowed to slits.
“Hm. That sounds an awful lot like you heard every word I said earlier?”
“...My apologies for that as well.”
“You do have quite a lot to apologize for today, don't you?”
“Mm.”
Eavesdropping was taboo even between friends, but So-yul had never been taught such niceties and had never once bothered to care; she didn't know the rule, and even had she known it, she'd have let it slide all the same. He had overheard those words only because he'd crept near out of worry for her safety — what was there to fault in that?
“Anyway — back to the shack and to bed. I'm a little tired. Haaahm—”
“Mm. Let's.”
Arching into a stretch, So-yul started back the way they'd come, and Ja-un followed quietly behind. Without so much as a breath of lightfoot art, they walked the silent night road, and only the crunch, crunch of two pairs of footsteps stirred the night air.
How long had they walked? At the sight of a small stream, So-yul brightened.
“Ugh, I feel grimy all over. I'm going to wash up over there — go on ahead?”
“...No. What sort of woman washes herself in a brook like that?”
Gawking at the trickle she'd pointed to, Ja-un sputtered in alarm — only for So-yul to look genuinely baffled by his reaction.
“Then where am I supposed to wash? Is there a bath back at that shack?”
“No, but for a wash, surely we could beg the merchants' courtesy, as we did earlier?”
“Oh, so earlier it was all 'armed ruffians under this roof, how could anyone sleep' — and now you'd wake every sleeping soul at midnight to announce, 'This blood-soaked wretch requires a bath — hand over a room!'? My, my.”
“I never called them ruffians! And... I would pay them handsomely for it, so surely that would be f—”
“Wow~ so you've been walking around with that naive young-master notion that money fixes everything?”
“If it were only me, I'd wash right here and be done with it! But you are a woman, Lady Kang. How can you be so heedless? What if someone were to see you?”
“So what if they see? It's not as if I'd wear away. Ahaha.”
“Wh... what?”
As ever, it was Ja-un who ended up red-faced first in these pointless little battles. When a man who argues from steadfast principle trades words with a woman who simply fires off whatever pops into her head, this is more or less how it always goes.
“Hoo. Do as you please. I'll go on ahead.”
Ja-un loosed a long sigh and turned away.
“Ah— wait, no. Actually, while I wash, fetch me some clothes, would you? I can hardly put the bloodstained ones back on after going to all that trouble, can I?”
“Er...”
As Ja-un's brow began to twitch, So-yul flashed her most impish grin.
“You said you had ever so much to be sorry for. Can't you manage this much?”
“...Very well.”
And so the great Jinsong Sword Saint of the realm — Cho Young-bin, sixty years of age — shot off into the night without a word, dispatched on an errand for a girl so young she could not even pass for his own daughter.
The moment Ja-un was gone, So-yul flung her clothes off in a flurry and slipped straight into the stream. Talk of being seen aside, it was the dead of night with nary a soul about — and even had someone come, they could never have slipped past her senses — so she set about scrubbing the blood from her skin in earnest.
“Oh dear. She did only buy the one change of clothes earlier. I suppose I'd best fetch what she was wearing before.”
Picking up the performance dress So-yul had worn the day they first met, Ja-un winced.
“Hah. To think anyone would call this a garment...”
But as he made to carry out the rag — hardly deserving the name of clothing — he stopped short and sank into thought.
“No... there's no need to bring this, of all things.”
So-yul's body had ended up spattered with a great deal more of the Heukgal Sect's blood than one would expect, and the reason was simple. Ordinary clothing, by rights, covers at least as much of the body as it leaves bare; her performance dress covered a good deal less. And so, having scrubbed down every last corner of herself — and, while she was at it, given her newly bought clothes a washing as well — she stood waiting for Ja-un in the damp garment fresh from the wash. Neither of them could exactly stand about in the altogether, after all.
Just then, Ja-un's qi signature came racing toward her at speed — only to slow, little by little, as it drew near, as though beset by second thoughts. Before long it stopped dead, rooted to the spot.
He had planted himself at quite a distance, and So-yul raised her voice.
“Why aren't you coming?”
“I... how could I possibly approach? You would have nothing on, my lady.”
Embarrassment soaked through Ja-un's voice.
“No, I'm wearing clo—”
But mid-denial, a wicked little smile bloomed across So-yul's face.
“—nothing at all, actually. I'm freezing out here, so hurry up and bring me clothes.”
“I... I could leave them in those bushes over there. Could you come fetch them?”
“And if I meet anyone at all on my walk to the bushes, will you take responsibility? Come here, hand them over, and be on your way.”
“Oh dear... then one moment... just one moment, please.”
Even through her snickering, So-yul's ears caught a faint rustling from far, far away. And then Ja-un came walking slowly toward her — and the sight of him wrenched a burst of laughter out of her before she could help it.
“AHAHAHAHAHA!”
“Wh... why are you laughing? This was the best I could manage!”
Ja-un — his eyes bound beneath layer upon layer of cloth — cried out in flustered protest, but So-yul's laughter refused to die down. Watching him stand frozen as a roadside stone at the sound, she snickered for a good long while before stepping close and peeling the cloth blindfold from his eyes.
“N-no, wait. One moment. What are you doing— put your clothes on first...”
“See? Wearing clothes.”
Though the blindfold was gone, Ja-un had kept his eyes screwed shut; at her words, he eased them open a sliver.
So-yul stood before him in startling, unguarded clarity, and he cried out, scandalized.
“You call that dressed? And you would show it to a man who is not even kin to you?”
“Huh?”
She could hardly help it — the dress was cut from thin silk to begin with, and having just been washed, it clung to her still dripping wet. It hugged her whole body, every curve and contour of her frame displayed exactly as it was, and her skin showed plainly through the weave, naturally. If anything, she'd have been less indecent wearing nothing at all. Ja-un strangled a cry of horror, screwed his eyes shut once more, flung the clothes in his hands at So-yul, and whirled away, lightfoot art blazing at full tilt.
“Honestly. I was wearing clothes — what's his problem? And there I was, only trying to get a rise out of him. Tch.”
Looking down at the bundle Ja-un had tossed her, So-yul's brow creased.
“And what, exactly, am I supposed to do with these?”
“A proper education, clearly, is what the child needs. What sort of surroundings could raise a girl with so little self-awareness?”
He had now seen, with his own eyes, the Bamboo Leaf Hand — a secret art known to no school outside Mount Hua — mastered at her fingertips, and so Ja-un decided that his planned visit to the mountain could not wait. Mount Hua stood among the Nine Great Sects, a load-bearing pillar of the orthodox world; it would never cast out a child whose arts came from some nameless expert of an outside school, and it possessed depth enough to school that pitiable girl properly.
Absorbed in these thoughts, Ja-un reached the shack first, and before long So-yul came trudging into view in her changed clothes.
“Well now. That suits you rather well.”
“These are your clothes! Give me back the ones I was wearing — those were a gift, you know.”
So-yul grumbled, packaging the outfit she had extorted off bandits as a heartfelt gift, but Ja-un did not budge an inch. He had handed over the cleanest, brightest-colored of his own martial robes; the sleeves swallowed her hands and the hems dragged at her heels, but at the very least she now wore something 'normal' — clothing of the sort that actually covered a body.
Ja-un nodded at the sight.
“Much better to look upon. A woman, by time-honored custom, ought to dress the part.”
“Hmm... now that I look at you, are you really my age? The way you talk, you sound like some old codger well past sixty...?”
“Ahem. Wh... what manner of talk is that? My wits merely ripened early. It is you, Lady Kang, who has yet to ripen at all.”
“Mmmeh. Whatever — I'll wear them. Changing again sounds like work.”
Hers was an uncomplaining, easygoing nature, and she acquiesced almost at once. Truthfully, squabbling over a single outfit — give it back!No, mine! — would have been a touch too childish even for her.
So-yul shuffled into one of the rooms and flopped onto the bedding. Ja-un's room lay directly beside hers, and as with every shack in the Central Plains, the walls were thin as paper; not a sound escaped them. With a single wall between them, the two lay side by side and drifted toward sleep.
“Ah— Lady Kang. Might I ask you just one thing?”
She had scarcely settled before the question came, and So-yul answered with a long-suffering drawl.
“Whaaat.”
“Back there, when you fought the Heukgal Sect. There was only the one Peak-realm expert — did the other simply not come?”
This was, in fact, the greatest of the reasons Ja-un had merely watched from afar. Among equals, two against one does not stand. Had two Peak experts shown themselves, he had meant to step in even if it earned him a tongue-lashing — but there had been only the one, and so he had held his peace and done nothing but observe.
“Oh, that one? No. He'd fallen back at the forest's edge, so I finished him off separately there.”
“Oh ho. Then you felled two Peak-realm experts in all?”
“I did, I suppose. It's hardly anything astonishing.”
“An achievement impressive enough, that. Might I ask what art you used? The Bamboo Leaf Hand?”
Fatigue had crept up on her, and drowsy before she knew it, So-yul murmured under her breath.
“No. I just planted a dagger in him, nice and deep. Who needs techniques? When the qi follows where my mind goes, all that's left is to let my arm reach naturally for the spot.”
CRASH—
“Wh... what did you just say?”
At the tremendous clatter and the sight of Ja-un scrambling upright in alarm the instant her words left her mouth, So-yul realized her slip and sighed.
Aw, damn it.
Step beyond the shapes and molds of technique, and let the blade unfold as the qi flows. Techniques are, in the end, things made by men — fixed routines, prescribed patterns. Bound to those patterns, one can never wield the true sword. To let the blade move freely, wherever the qi leads — that is the first key to the Transformation Realm.
For a moment she thought she had blundered; then, thinking it over — well, no, not really. Ja-un was no master of the Transformation Realm; how would he ever make sense of it? Still, from the way he had startled, something in those words had plainly struck home — which merely confirmed that the fellow had real talent, nothing more.
“Mm? No, no. All I meant was that I stabbed him as fast as I possibly could. Nothing grand by any means.”
“...Is that so?”
“Yep.”
Ja-un, for his part, had been knocked half senseless. The very doctrine of the Transformation Realm, tumbling unbidden from the lips of this young child — how could he not be? But her ensuing reaction made it look like nothing more than sleep-slurred rambling, and he soon steadied his startled heart and lay back down.
All the same — talent was talent. Such martial gifts must not be left to rot, and so he resolved to offer his gifted junior one piece of advice.
“Lady Kang. Never forget what you just said. How you wielded your blade — remember it.”
“Sure thing...”
“Lady Kang.”
“What now...”
And with that parting blessing from a greenhorn who had barely scraped his way into the Peak realm, So-yul yawned and shut her eyes.
“Haaahm. Well, kind words are kind, I suppose. Can I go to sleep now, Grandpa?”
“Ahem.”
For a senior lofty as the heavens to offer his heartfelt guidance, only to be answered by this bratty junior's sarcasm — the sheer gall of it. Truly outrageous. But what could he do? They were, for now, friends — equals of one and the same realm.
“Sleep well, my lady.”
“Night-night, Ja-un.”
Before long, on the outskirts of Cheongseok County in Gansu, two sets of even breathing quietly intertwined and flowed as one inside that lonely shack steeped in moonlight.
Beyond the window, pale moonlight threaded its way between the clouds and softly gathered the two of them into its glow.