The Spider's Thread and a Yandere's Jealousy
The unexpected side of Dokgo Seok that he showed during dinner left Dokgo Rin with a tangled mess in her head. What the hell is going on?
According to the knowledge she possessed, Dokgo Seok was the worst kind of bastard who had sold out his own family for personal glory. Yet the Dokgo Seok standing before her now cherished her to an almost terrifying degree. The complete mismatch between the information she originally knew and his current behavior left her no choice but to spiral into confusion.
Could it be that I was wrong all along?
She knew that Dokgo Seok, the second son of the Dokgo Clan and her second eldest brother, hid an immense ambition beneath his carefree exterior. From beginning to end, he had never intended to conceal it. That was why he had borrowed the power of the Murim Alliance Lord, an outside force, to flip the hierarchy within the family. In the process, he was stabbed in the back and purged by the very Alliance Lord he thought would help him, dying a meaningless death. That was the original history Dokgo Rin remembered.
But the current Dokgo Seok was the same playful clown on the surface, winning people’s favor with his easygoing attitude, yet he genuinely seemed to care for her as his little sister. The more she thought about it, the more her head throbbed.
That was when it happened.
From the room right next door came Chilbok’s voice.
[…I have amnesia.]
Because the wall between the rooms was thin, every word spoken next door came through clearly. Dokgo Rin, who had been lying on the bed, shot upright and pricked up her ears.
[According to the doctor, I suffered such a severe shock when my parents died that I can’t remember anything before the age of twelve.]
Come to think of it, she knew almost nothing about Chilbok. More precisely, she knew nothing about his past. In her previous life, Chilbok had never liked talking about his history, so whenever she asked, he would only dodge the question with a bitter smile.
Yet for some reason, he had opened up about his past to Gyeong-a, who shared his room. And Gyeong-a had accepted his pain exactly as it was.
[If anything hard comes up in the future, tell me anytime. Big sis will help you as much as I can.]
Gyeong-a hadn’t done anything wrong as an adult, but the moment Dokgo Rin heard those words, her mood plummeted. After all, even though she had gone through the trouble of regressing to the past, she still hadn’t earned Chilbok’s complete trust. Yet Gyeong-a had grown close to him as naturally as adding water to water or liquor to liquor, and their relationship had developed to the point where he would reveal the past he had kept tightly wrapped in layers of secrecy.
The instant she realized that, Dokgo Rin felt a single emotion surge through her. A nauseating feeling, as if something dark and boiling was churning inside her chest. She quickly identified it.
It was jealousy.
She was envious of the bond that had formed between the maid Gyeong-a and Chilbok.
That was why she marched straight over and knocked on the door without hesitation.
“Chilbok, are you in there?”
The sudden knock caused a flurry of hurried movement inside. They were probably both scrambling in panic at her unexpected visit. Imagining the scene cooled her head somewhat, and she called his name again.
“Chilbok?”
“Yes! Young Miss!”
Chilbok hastily opened the door and greeted her. She didn’t know what he had been doing moments before, but his clothes were disheveled. On top of that, the faint scent of the sachet Gyeong-a always carried to mask the smell of sweat from her days living on the streets clung gently to his body.
If one didn’t know the context, it was the perfect situation to misunderstand completely.
For a second, Dokgo Rin felt her mind go blank. She bit her lip and asked,
“Why did you take so long to come out?”
Chilbok then told an obvious lie without even batting an eye.
“I was in the middle of organizing my luggage.”
“Hmm—”
If he had just told the truth, she wouldn’t have had to feel these ugly emotions.
“Really? Then why does your body smell like that maid?”
In the end, she pointed it out anyway.
“…Pardon?”
“That’s the scent of the musk sachet she always carries with her.”
One of the things that had been irritating her nerves since earlier.
“Did the two of you do something?”
She asked him directly, her voice laced with the dark emotion rising from the depths of her chest.
Her tone was clearly interrogative, as if she would accept no deception whatsoever. The intangible pressure radiating from Dokgo Rin sent a chill down my spine. My brain kicked into overdrive.
If I tried to gloss things over here, her sharp senses would never buy it. So I honestly confessed everything Gyeong-a noona and I had talked about inside the room. That I had amnesia, that I couldn’t remember a single thing before age twelve, and that I only knew about my parents through knowledge rather than memory. When I added that Gyeong-a noona had pitied me and given me a hug because of it, Dokgo Rin’s stiff expression finally softened.
“If that’s the case, then it can’t be helped.”
“I told you from the beginning it was a misunderstanding.”
Then Dokgo Rin spoke with a completely straight face.
“But Chilbok, if you let your guard down even a little, you end up charming every woman around you.”
I blinked blankly at her words.
“…I charm women?”
It was completely new information to me.
“Yeah.”
But Dokgo Rin nodded with a rather serious expression.
“You’re polite and friendly to everyone. Of course people are going to misunderstand.”
“I actually think I’m the one getting ostracized, though.”
In truth, during the month I worked at the Dokgo Clan residence, the only people who approached me first were mostly adults. The kids my age only watched from afar and never tried to talk to me, so I had actually felt a bit left out.
“Anyway, let’s stop with the pointless chatter and get to the main topic, Young Miss. Why did you suddenly call me out?”
When I changed the subject like that, Dokgo Rin scratched her cheek with an awkward expression, as if she had only just remembered.
“Ah, right. That.”
She had clearly been so busy interrogating me about what I was doing in the room that she had completely forgotten her original purpose.
“The truth is, I’ve been thinking about it for the past few days. Since we don’t know what might happen during the journey, I thought it would be good for you to learn at least something so you can protect yourself.”
“Pardon?”
What was this all of a sudden? Was she telling me to learn martial arts?
But as the saying goes, “even the unexpected can catch a person,” the next words that left Dokgo Rin’s mouth were completely beyond anything I could have imagined.
“Would you like to learn martial arts from me?”
Would you like to learn martial arts from me?
Martial arts. Honestly, as a former web novel addict, those words made my heart burn with excitement. Everyone has dreamed at least once of being the Heavenly Demon, the Sword Saint, or the Archmage, right? And now the person who could be called the protagonist of this world, Dokgo Rin, was personally offering to teach me.
I clutched my trembling chest and asked carefully.
“Um, what kind of martial art are you talking about?”
There was no way she would teach me the Nine Palace Matchless Sword Art, the clan’s secret technique. After all, it was a martial art only direct bloodline members of the Dokgo Clan could learn, and without the matching Great Void Mind Method, it would be completely useless.
And just as I expected, the martial art Dokgo Rin mentioned was something entirely different.
“The martial art I want to teach you is called Mist Spirit Thread, a hidden weapon technique.”
Mist Spirit Thread. I had heard that name before. In the original novel The Heavenly Poison Witch, it was mentioned as one of the hidden weapon arts mainly used by the bloodline of the Sichuan Tang Clan. It involved manipulating steel threads—steel pulled out as thin and long as silk. The reason Dokgo Rin had once been called the Spider Woman in her previous life was precisely because she had mastered Mist Spirit Thread to its peak.
“If you learn Mist Spirit Thread properly, even someone like you, Chilbok, should be able to easily defeat an average mid-level warrior.”
“Is it really okay for me to learn such a precious technique?”
“I’m only teaching it because it’s you and me. A technique on the level of Mist Spirit Thread is normally something you couldn’t buy even with money.”
Seeing Dokgo Rin boast like this, it really must be a technique with considerable value.
“So, what will it be? Will you learn it? Or not?”
I nodded without the slightest hesitation at her question.
“I’ll learn it!”
There was no way I could miss such a golden opportunity. Besides, wasn’t Dokgo Rin destined to become one of the future Ten Great Masters of the World? Becoming the disciple of such an expert carried enormous merit in a murim world. Even if that master would later become a public enemy of the murim with terrifying notoriety.
“Then from now on, you and I will be in a master-disciple relationship, right? Should we do the nine bows ceremony?”
“Huh? That’s a bit…”
“Hehe, I’m just kidding.”
Dokgo Rin laughed mischievously, then clasped her hands behind her back and said,
“As if I would teach you martial arts just to make you bow to me.”
She looked perfectly capable of doing exactly that, but I wisely kept my mouth shut. Sometimes a person just has to hold their tongue.
“Anyway, let’s call it a night for today. To learn Mist Spirit Thread, we need some materials, and I don’t think we can get them right now.”
“Materials?”
“Yeah. I’ll buy them when we reach the next city.”
“……”
In my heart, I wanted to start training in martial arts immediately, but in the current situation, Dokgo Rin held all the authority. Since my master had no intention of teaching me right now, there was nothing a mere disciple like me could say in protest. I obediently decided to follow her words.
“You won’t go back on your word later, right?”
“That’s my line. Even if you whine, I won’t go easy on you.”
At first I had been worried about how things would turn out, but fortunately the conversation ended on a warm note. We slipped back into the inn before anyone else noticed.