The False Eagle and the Green-Haired Girl
"Damn it! They got wiped out!"
"W-what the hell is that old hag!?"
While Dang Yulin was busy dunking the masked men, the two who had been left behind at the hut were dumbfounded.
They had stayed behind just in case the sculptor, O Naho, tried to run, and in doing so had suddenly become the last survivors standing.
"H-huh! She's coming this way..!"
And now it looked like Dang Yulin was headed straight for the hut.
Ten men had charged her and still ended up in that state, so there was no way two of them could beat her.
They were the sort of masked men who’d happily beat an old man senseless, but remained soft-hearted in all the ways that really didn’t matter.
The two of them flailed helplessly, all "what do we do, what do we do?"
But only for a moment. Very soon, they reached a conclusion.
"Let’s dunk the old man before it gets any later, take the sculpture, and run."
"Yeah, that’s best. I’ll do the dunking."
It was hard to argue with their casual talk of murder and corpse disposal. In what universe was that "soft-hearted"?
Then again, no one had said they were soft-handed.
"...You sons of bitches."
And O Naho, who had been eavesdropping on the conversation with his ear pressed to the door, grimaced.
As expected, those filthy, low-down, motherless bastards had been planning to kill him all along.
If he’d believed they would simply leave after finishing their business, he’d have been in real trouble.
No, in fact, he was already in trouble—but if he stayed quiet, the trouble would only get worse.
I’m not dying like this. Not when it’s this unfair! I’m not dying!
Whether Hephaestus had truly looked down on him or not, the move had landed perfectly.
Under normal circumstances, the people outside would have been nothing more than vicious clients who came all the way to his workshop. But right now, they were no different from angels sent to save him from Satan’s minions.
He didn’t know who they were, but thanks to the fact that they were busily butchering each other, an escape route had opened up.
I’ll get the drop on them before they burst in!
Having made up his mind, O Naho rose to his feet.
Bang—!
Then he put all the strength his old, worn-out joints could muster into a savage kick that sent the door flying open.
"Goddamn it—! Y-you startled me..."
"Hey! What the hell is wrong with this old man!? You were supposed to be done with the job already, weren’t you!?"
Like a thief whose guilty conscience had been pricked, the two masked men jolted when the very target of their murder-and-cleanup discussion suddenly burst out in front of them.
"Well, that settles it. Saves us some trouble."
After all, he’d been about to steal his life—by murder—but then he walked right out on his own.
Shiiing—
A sword was drawn from the masked man’s waist.
This was a mysterious blade that turned the living into the dead.
And just as he was about to test that mystery—
"Wait. Hold on."
—O Naho stopped the masked men in a voice so stern, so grave, so serious it sounded like the judgment of heaven itself.
"Oh, spare me."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
The two of them snorted and moved in closer.
"...Didn’t I tell you to stop?"
O Naho lifted the things he’d hidden behind his back, one in each hand.
"T-that’s not—"
Only then did the masked men flinch and halt.
What he had taken out were bundles wrapped in cloth, and something about their size looked strangely familiar.
"Hey, old man. Don’t tell me that in there..."
"That’s right. Inside these bundles is the white-headed eagle sculpture you ordered us to make."
O Naho was currently standing right beside the furnace the masked men used at night.
Crackle— crackle—
The embers from the previous day were still smoldering quietly.
"Don’t move!"
".....!"
When the masked men exchanged a glance, preparing to subdue him, O Naho barked sharply and tightened his grip.
Jiggle-jiggle—
The bundle danced above the furnace.
"These bundles aren’t just bundles! They’ve been soaked in oil!"
Even if those men had never been to school, they still knew what happened when oil met fire.
"...What do you want?"
The masked man motioned for calm and asked what O Naho wanted.
He couldn’t afford to give this up here.
After all, the order for Lia-rudol to create the eagle sculpture had come from the caravan master himself.
And if this failed...
He didn’t even want to imagine what the price of failure would be, especially with the way the caravan had been operating lately.
Most of the other men were already dead, so they needed to bring back at least this much to save face.
"First, back off. Now!"
"...Then when will you give us the goods?"
"Once I decide you’ve put enough distance between us, I’ll leave it there. Figure it out yourselves."
"Fine."
As long as the item remained in the old man’s hands, they couldn’t afford to provoke him recklessly, so the masked men began backing away exactly as ordered.
"More. More. More. Keep going until I can’t see you anymore."
One step, two steps, three.
Just as the distance between them continued to widen—
"......."
"......."
the two men met each other’s eyes, silently agreed on something, and then kicked off the ground and lunged forward.
Whoosh—!
What? He wanted them to get far enough away that he couldn’t see them?
How were they supposed to obey a demand like that when an enemy was closing in from behind and getting closer by the second?
The only reason they’d backed away was to build up momentum!
I’ll snatch the bundle and cut his throat right here!
And once they reached the mountains, it would be over.
"Ghk!"
As the masked men closed the distance at speed, O Naho swallowed a groan.
Right. It wouldn’t be that easy!
"If that’s how it’s going to be, then this old man goes all in!"
He let go of the bundle he’d been holding above the furnace and hurled the other one down to the dirt with all his strength.
In that instant, time seemed to slow, and the masked men saw the bundles.
No, wait—bundles?
Something they’d forgotten for a moment now returned to them.
The thing they’d ordered was clearly only one piece, so why were there two bundles?
The answer came easily.
Damn it! One of them is a fake!
If there had only been one bundle, one man could grab it while the other went for O Naho’s neck.
But if two bundles dropped at once, then both of them would have to go after the bundles.
"What a sly old bastard!"
"I’m going for the furnace one!"
Unable to tell which of the two bundles was real, the masked men split left and right.
"N-no way..!"
"Don’t be late!"
The two of them threw themselves forward as if catching a child who’d fallen from a great height, lunging to save the bundles.
Crash— bang—!
It had been a hair’s breadth, really.
"The goods..! What’s the condition of the goods!?"
The masked men hurriedly tore open their respective bundles.
"Huh!?"
"No way, this is..."
From inside the bundles came voices of complete disappointment.
What tumbled out were half-finished sculptures and random scraps.
Bad luck! Both of them were fakes!
In his effort to deceive them, O Naho had made them look enough like eagles that neither man had noticed the unnatural details in time.
"You old bastard!!"
"He tricked us!"
Their disappointment quickly turned into rage at having been toyed with by O Naho, but by then he was already gone.
Goodbye, everyone.
"Then the real one is..."
The two of them hurried into the hut.
Fortunately, there on the worktable inside the hut sat a sculpture of the White-Headed Heavenly Awakening Eagle, shimmering with a brilliant luster.
"Hah, hah..."
"Thank goodness."
"For what?"
Just as the masked men let out a sigh of relief, someone interrupted them from behind.
They whipped around in alarm, but there was nothing there—
"Not there. Down here. Here."
—or so it seemed, until they lowered their gaze and found a girl with green hair tied into twin tails.
"Mind telling me what exactly is so lucky, too?"
Dang Yulin asked, casually flipping the bi-do in her hand.
* * *
"Huff! Huff! Hah!"
O Naho ran with his tongue practically lolling out of his mouth.
I left the eagle sculpture at the hut, so they shouldn’t be after me right away..!
At first, he’d considered taking it along as insurance, but he’d immediately rejected the idea.
If he ran off with the eagle sculpture, those bastards would have chased him to the ends of the earth.
And if the situation was already bad and they’d gotten what they wanted, there was also a chance they’d just go back.
"Huff! Hah! At this point..."
After climbing the mountain without stopping, he finally halted and looked around.
Rustle, rustle—
He gathered up a few suitable branches lying nearby, then reached into his clothes and pulled something out.
It was a sculptor’s essential tool: a carving knife.
If the Songmun Ancient Sword was the weapon of the Wudang sect and the Plum Blossom Sword belonged to Mount Hua, then the carving knife was the sculptor’s own sacred tool.
Fwap-fwap-fwap!
O Naho put on the touch of a master and worked the carving knife with practiced hands.
He cut the branches, carved grooves into them, then fitted other branches into place.
It was closer to carpentry than sculpting, but he happened to know carpentry as well.
Riiip—!
After a few minutes of quick work, he tore off his shirt.
He twisted the torn cloth into cords and tied them onto both sides.
And just like that, O Naho had completed something easy to carry on his back—a yoke!
Wait, a yoke here?
The combination of mountain, yoke, and old man.
For some reason, it brought to mind a grim image of rationing to survive.
"Ugh!"
Using a branch of a decent length as a walking stick, O Naho hoisted the yoke onto his back.
Why was he doing this while in the middle of fleeing?
Because he needed to prepare for the vicious client who would inevitably come after him.
In his eyes, that client would definitely catch up.
The masked men left at the hut would never be able to stop the client.
He was grateful to them for creating an opening by slaughtering the others and letting him escape, but he couldn’t forget one thing.
The client was furious with him.
Seeing how ruthlessly she killed anyone who blocked her path, she clearly had one hell of a temper.
There was no chance someone like that would let him off easily if she saw him.
So let’s just head down the mountain looking like an ordinary woodcutter.
"Excuse me. Grandpa."
Speak of the tiger, and it comes—someone called out to stop him.
Damn it! My heart nearly jumped out of my chest.
"I had something I wanted to ask you."
It was Dang Yulin, who had followed after him from the hut after dunking the masked men.
Crouching on a rock with her chin propped on her hands, she looked down at him and asked, "Wh-what is it, child?"
"Might I ask if you’ve seen an old man running away around here? Hmm... someone who seems about the same age as you, maybe?"
Just from the way she asked, it was obvious she’d come looking for him.
"An old man running away? Hmm... I did see someone rushing off that way earlier."
He pointed toward the deeper part of the mountains.
"Really? Thank you for telling me. But what are you doing out here, Grandpa?"
But Dang Yulin didn’t get up. She just kept asking.
"Me? I was working with wood."
"Ah, come on. What kind of woodcutter goes out without an axe?"
"Miss, age’ll get to you too. My arms don’t have the strength for axes anymore. I just pick up broken branches lying around here and there."
"Hmm... really? Is that true?"
Dang Yulin gave him a suspicious look.
"Of course it’s true! Do you think I’d lie to some youngster your age?"
"Huh?"
O Naho suddenly flared up as if she’d kicked him in the ribs.
"If an adult says something, you take it as fact! Why are you pestering me with all these questions!?"
"Ah, s-sorry..."
Unlike the image of his future melting into a single drop of poison, Dang Yulin didn’t know what to do with herself.
In this age, where Confucian values ruled people’s brains, a scolding delivered under the authority of age still worked remarkably well.
In other words, this was an era in which age was its own form of rank.
"What, do I have to go home and uh, gasp for breath while showing you I’ve got no strength in my arms!? Would that satisfy you!? Huh!?"
"N-no..."
"You little brat, how dare you look down on your elders! Get down here! What the hell!"
"Y-yes, sir..."
At his shouting, Dang Yulin hopped down from the rock.
"That’s all I saw, so believe it or don’t, I don’t care! I went out of my way to tell you because I figured a kid like you would get lost in the mountains, and now you’re giving me the third degree."
"I didn’t mean it that way. If I offended you, I’m sorry."
Dang Yulin bowed with her hands clasped, looking like a chastened kitten.
"Tsk! Anyway, I don’t know who that was and it has absolutely nothing to do with me, but I hope you find the person you were looking for too, miss. Well then, I’ll be off."
"Yes... please take care."
O Naho forced down his pounding heart and started walking again.
Long strides.
He marched forward with heavy, confident steps.
Done! It was done! He could escape like this—
"...You really thought I’d let you get away with that?"
Then Dang Yulin suddenly burst out from the thicket.
"Hah—!"
"Where are you rushing off to like that, Master?"
Dang Yulin smiled faintly.
"I came all this way because I admired your craftsmanship, Master."
Yes, he was done for.
He was completely done for.