Jealousy (3)
Back home, Ma Chao was given a stern dressing-down by her father.
"Ma Chao! Why on earth did you do such a thing!!"
Han Sui had been furious that his son had taken a blow in the middle of a banquet, and Ma Teng, though bewildered himself, had flown into a great rage over his daughter's blunder.
Acutely aware of her own mistake, Ma Chao bowed her head deep.
"...Father, I'm sorry. I only... I just wanted to make a friend..."
Hearing his daughter's words, Ma Teng let out a long, heavy sigh.
He knew all too well how lonely she had been, growing up without a single friend her own age, and so he couldn't bring himself to simply keep yelling. This whole disaster had come about because of his own misguided rule — the one that taught her to "converse" with men through sparring. Who could have guessed she would take the method meant for drilling alongside burly male soldiers and apply it to the very first friend she tried to make?
"You might at least have pulled your blows..."
Ma Chao's martial skill far surpassed his own back in his youth. Naturally, it was nothing a child her age could have withstood.
"...I'm truly sorry."
Whew.
Letting out a sigh thick with regret, Ma Teng gently soothed his daughter.
"Ma Chao, go to Han Yeong and apologize. I must apologize to Wenyue separately as well."
"What? Because of me, even you, Father...?"
"I share the blame for this — the fault of a wrong upbringing. A child's mistake is as good as the parent's."
Fortunately, though Han Yeong had fainted, he had come away without any real injury, and once he woke, he had barely managed to calm Han Sui, who had been raging and declaring he would sever the sworn brotherhood then and there.
Even so, to mend the awkwardness that had crept in between the families since the brotherhood was formed, they would have to be the ones to bow their heads first.
"...We owe Wenyue a great debt. Repaying it is simply our duty... And yet we repaid his kindness with enmity, so of course he's angry."
"Yes. You're right..."
The Ma family never forgot a kindness — or a grudge. She had caused trouble before they could repay what they owed Han Sui, and the thought left Ma Teng deeply troubled by his daughter's actions.
"And so I, who failed to keep my own child in check, must naturally offer him my apology as well."
"...I'm sorry."
"Save your apology for Han Yeong."
Cursing her own foolishness, Ma Chao set out with her father for Han Sui's residence once more.
I'm an idiot.
Would Han Yeong really forgive her?
I swung a fist at him the moment we first met, after all.
Convinced that this time, too, any hope of friendship was doomed, Ma Chao's expression turned bitter.
But—
"It's fine. I accept. Let's be friends again."
"Huh?"
Han Yeong had accepted her apology with easy grace.
"...You're not mad?"
When Ma Chao asked carefully, he deliberated a moment before answering honestly.
"It'd be a lie to say I wasn't. By all accounts I looked utterly pathetic, but it did hurt enough to knock me out."
Admitting both the pain and the anger, Han Yeong played it off with a joke.
"Then why..."
"You apologized sincerely, didn't you? Isn't that what counts?"
At her dumbfounded look, he broke into a grin.
"Everyone makes mistakes. What matters is never making the same one twice."
Ma Chao was still young, still green. But seeing her apologize so earnestly, Han Yeong figured her character couldn't be all that bad at heart, and he held out his hand to her.
"There may be plenty of things I end up needing your help with from now on. So — I'm counting on you... friend,"
Friend.
At that word, so impossibly hard to come by until now, warmth flooded Ma Chao's chest, and tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, falling one bead at a time.
"...Yeah. I'm counting on you too."
Ma Chao took Han Yeong's hand, and just like that, the two of them made up — and became friends in the same breath.
Five years slipped by in a flash.
Through all of them, Ma Chao remained at Han Yeong's side as his childhood friend, watching his every step. He lent out horses so the common folk could plow open new fields; he escorted merchant caravans across the lawless wilderness where the Qiang tribes ran rampant, then poured every coin he earned into relief grain for the starving. All manner of work, all of it done for the sake of the people's hearts.
"Young Master! Doesn't that cloud passing over there look just like a horse?"
"No, that one looks like a deer to me."
Sometimes he whiled away the hours trading silly jokes with his escort, Yan Xing, or slipped out in disguise to the market quarter to buy food — and Ma Chao was there for all of it, too.
He's a genuinely good man.
That was the impression Ma Chao had formed of Han Yeong. In this chaotic age, where greed and desire festered in every corner, he was a good man who shouldered every kind of labor for the people's sake. He spared no effort in anything he did, and coaxed smiles back onto the lips of people who had long since sunk into despair.
Watching the people regain their vitality and laugh again, Ma Chao felt the sense of justice she had buried long ago springing up anew, shoot by shoot. A justice that belonged neither to the rotten court nor to rebels waging war for personal gain — it lived in the hearts of the people.
Living through that whole string of undertakings at Han Yeong's side, watching him all the while, she arrived at a single conclusion.
The things Han Yeong does — that is what justice looks like.
At an age barely shy of his coming-of-age rites, he was already aiding Han Sui's work, overseeing public order, and devising tools to bolster farming and commerce. For the sake of Xiliang's barren, impoverished people, he toiled day and night without rest.
In Ma Chao's eyes, Han Yeong was extraordinary. He himself insisted he was nothing of the sort, but to her, he blazed.
And yet even after six years of training, his martial arts remained unremarkable for a general's son — which meant no shortage of Qiang warriors had marked him as a prize target, the son of a powerful clan.
She had to protect him. She, after all, carried the blood of the great Han general Ma Yuan, blessed with rare talent in both strategy and the martial arts — talent that Han Yeong, plainly, did not have. Each could shore up the other's weaknesses; each could be the other's strength.
So Ma Chao threw herself into honing blade and mind alike. She slipped out on nights when the whole household slept to drill her techniques, and multiplied her patrols, smashing bands of bandits to temper body and spirit.
Because she wanted to protect Han Yeong — and his dream along with him. If her name rang out beyond Xiliang and she stayed planted at his side, no one would ever be able to lay a hand on him.
Once, she had pursued honor and glory for one purpose alone: to lift her fallen family back up. But alongside the sense of justice she had buried in childhood, a wish to protect Han Yeong had grown until it was no smaller.
If I could become stronger than anyone under heaven...
She nursed that burning ambition in her chest. At some point, without quite realizing it, she had begun to picture a future in which she and Han Yeong would make their names known across the world. To leap from here into the Central Plains, the heart of all under heaven, her plan was to spread the epithet Splendid Ma Chao across every corner of Xiliang before she came of age — until bandits turned tail at the mere sound of her name.
But...
An unwelcome guest appeared. A woman with martial skill enough to trade blows evenly with her — with her, who had never once known an equal — and beauty to match.
Pang De.
When she first joined the army on a temporary basis, Ma Chao had thought little of it. After all, Pang De was a guest general who would fight beside them for this one campaign only, driven by a personal vendetta. If anything, Ma Chao had counted it a blessing at the time — a stalwart ally gained.
But when Pang De returned bearing Beigong Boyu's head and swore her loyalty to Han Yeong, something in the corner of Ma Chao's chest had ached.
...Why does my chest burn as if a thousand fires have caught inside it?
When word came that Yan Xing would attend to military affairs at Han Sui's side while Pang De took charge of assisting Han Yeong's work and guarding him, that clinging, crawling emotion swelled past anything she could suppress.
Every time she finished a patrol, she sent the soldiers ahead to camp and, instead of going home, made straight for Han Yeong's office. And each time, she picked fights over every last trifle, needling Pang De at every turn.
She couldn't have explained the reason if pressed. But one feeling was certain... Ma Chao was uneasy with Pang De at Han Yeong's side. The woman wielded a blade nearly as well as she did, and she hated — truly hated — the idea of Han Yeong taking an interest in someone so striking.
Praying Yan Xing would hurry back to Han Yeong's side, she met Pang De's long list of criticisms of her with flat indifference. Their temperaments were oil and water to begin with, and the relationship only curdled further, until a murderous air rose between them without either of them willing it.
She had thrown down challenge after challenge, trying to spar Pang De out of Han Yeong's orbit, but every duel ended without a verdict. This time, she had sworn, she would finally win and tear Pang De away from Han Yeong for good...
...I made him angry instead.
Han Yeong, who showed nothing but kindness to the common people and to his officers — she had never dreamed he could wear a face that furious. At the sight of it, the memory of the day she had struck Han Yeong unconscious flashed through Ma Chao's mind, vivid as yesterday.
They had only just barely reconciled. Terrified that the distance between them might widen again, she had ended up apologizing to Pang De first and trudging home.
"Haa... you absolute idiot."
Ma Chao berated herself without end. The thought that her selfishness had caused Han Yeong trouble sent deep regret crashing over her.
This isn't how any of it was supposed to go...
True, she had clashed with Pang De wreathed in killing intent — but she hadn't truly hated her. She simply couldn't stomach the sight of a beautiful woman planted at Han Yeong's side.
Love... no, she could hardly claim it was that. Even having passed her coming-of-age ceremony, she was still sixteen — an age at which it was hard to recognize, concretely, an emotion called love.
...I'll have to go apologize tomorrow.
Melancholy stacked on fatigue, and drowsiness came pouring down; slowly, Ma Chao began to drift toward sleep.
Knock, knock.
Just then, her attendant knocked at the door.
"My lady? Are you asleep by any chance?"
"...What is it?"
Perhaps because she'd been roused just as sleep finally claimed her, there was a faint edge to Ma Chao's voice.
"You have a visitor."
"A visitor? At this hour? Who is it?"
Everything in the world annoyed her just then. If the caller turned out to be anyone of no consequence, she intended to send them straight home.
"It is Master Han Yeong."
"Wh-what?!"
Every trace of sleep gone, Ma Chao shot upright on her bed in a panic.