The Wheel of Teaching
On the first day, Sunya had his students draw pictures.
Sitting still and sketching at their leisure felt awkward and strange, yet both of them spent the entire day drawing just as Sunya instructed.
The next day, he had them mold clay into pottery. The day after that, he set them to carving wood and stringing sinew into bowstrings to fashion arrows.
In the days that followed, he made them stack stone towers, or use short and long sticks he called "chopsticks" to transfer grain from one jar to another.
Either of them might have voiced a question at least once — yet neither Enede nor Adapa did. They simply followed Sunya's instructions in silence.
Then, on the sixth day, Sunya spoke to his students.
"Today, finish everything you've done so far — all of it — within a single day."
Naturally, there was none of the leisure they'd enjoyed before.
Both of them gave it everything they had, but the results were far from good.
Their drawing skills, never impressive to begin with, had now deteriorated to the point where the shapes were barely recognizable. The clay pottery came out so unstable it could scarcely serve its purpose. In their haste carving wood, they cut their hands; forcing the bowstring into place, they snapped the bow itself. The stone tower rose to less than half the height of previous attempts, and far more grain ended up on the floor than in the jar.
"That will be enough."
When time ran out, Sunya stopped them.
"Why do you suppose this happened? You'd already done each of these things once — and yet you performed worse than before."
Sunya asked a question that seemed almost too obvious.
By this point Enede felt a flicker of irritation, but she answered him all the same.
"We were rushed. We hurried because of the time pressure, so we made more mistakes."
"Yes, exactly. You had no room to breathe. When a person has leisure, they become calmer, more precise — able to bring their full ability to bear."
"…Isn't that just common sense?"
The thought that he had put them through all these pointless exercises merely to teach something so obvious left Enede in a foul mood.
Adapa said nothing aloud, but he felt much the same.
"You're right. It is common sense. And one of the things I intend to teach you is precisely this — to make you truly feel the things that are obvious."
Sunya took out a bow from somewhere and began to string it.
The string, however, was far too short.
— Snap.
Midway through stringing, the cord broke and lashed across the back of his hand.
Enede and Adapa both winced — but Sunya himself seemed entirely unbothered.
"If a bowstring is drawn too tight, it snaps. Conversely, if it's too loose, it can't serve as a bow at all."
"…"
"…"
"I've taken rather a long way around to say it, but what I want you to understand is simple. Do not rush. I hope you'll keep that firmly in mind throughout my lessons. And the ultimate goal of my teaching is this: to ensure that you can maintain a proper measure of composure, no matter the moment."
Hearing that, Enede and Adapa thought the same thing at the same time.
We've come to the wrong place!
On the way back after class ended, Enede finally vented her grievances to Adapa.
"Isn't this a bit much? We came all the way out here just to be taught something like that. The teacher's really something else."
"…I'm sure the teacher has his reasons."
"You say that, but your face is full of complaints too, Adapa."
"…"
Adapa offered no reply.
Enede looked down at him — and then her eyes curved with a sly, knowing light.
"Our poor Adapa. You're in a foul mood, so why don't you come unwind with your big sister?"
Enede rested a hand on Adapa's shoulder.
"Un… unwind?"
"Mm-hmm. Unwind. Big sister will teach you something fun."
At last the serpent struck its prey.
She flicked her tongue and licked her lips. A virgin had a particular flavor all his own — the kind that made one's mouth water for any number of reasons.
"Come to my place. I'll explain the details at the lodging."
"Pardon?"
In twenty-first-century Korea, this would have fallen under statutory rape of a minor. But in this age, no such law existed.
To an outsider, it might have looked like an innocent boy being deceived by a cunning older woman, about to lose his chastity. Unfortunately for Enede, she failed to notice something.
The boy she had marked as prey was wearing a thoroughly wicked smile of his own.
"Wh-what? Why are you so good at this?"
"Not bad at all, big sister. That springy tightness all the way inside — it's completely my type."
"Ahhng♡ Th-this isn't how it was supposed to—"
"What do you mean, 'isn't'? Appearances aren't everything, you know."
"W-w-w-wait!! Not there—?!"
"If you're a female, then act like one and just come."
"C-coming♡ Nngiiiii—!"
That night, the moans from Enede's lodging never ceased.
"A-are you all right?"
Sunya asked in a concerned voice.
Anyone who saw Enede's exhausted state would have been worried. Adapa, by contrast, looked thoroughly refreshed.
Perceptive as he was, Sunya could roughly guess what had happened the night before.
"How could you deceive me like that?!"
Enede glared at Adapa.
"I never actually lied about anything. You just took one look at my face and the way I talk and jumped to conclusions, didn't you?"
"You led me into that misunderstanding from the very start, Lord Adapa!!"
"You enjoyed yourself plenty last night, so this is a bit much. You liked it quite a lot yourself, didn't you?"
"That's completely different! How can someone called a royal advisor from a great city like Eridu act like that?"
At this rate the argument was going to drag on forever.
"You ought to keep your composure. When the heart is hurried, one tends to see only what one expects."
"…"
"Yes, Teacher."
Enede found Adapa's solitary agreement thoroughly irritating. She would have loved nothing more than to kick him in the rear — but given the gulf in their status and rank, that was out of the question.
So only Enede was left seething inside.
I'll get my revenge for this. Absolutely.
As she barely managed to swallow her anger, Sunya spoke again.
"I'll teach you a breathing technique — one that will help composure take root in your hearts."
"A breathing technique, Teacher?"
Adapa looked puzzled. He knew that one adjusted one's breathing according to the situation, but he wondered whether it was something that truly needed to be learned from someone else.
He half-expected another lesson in the obvious — but he quickly realized that assumption was wrong.
"Breathe in slowly, and exhale calmly. You must never forget your composure."
Adapa and Enede assumed the posture called lotus position and breathed according to the method Sunya taught them.
Yet the Prana Breathing Method he instructed them in was astonishingly uncomfortable, inefficient, and difficult to grasp.
Far from settling the mind, continuing it seemed more likely to grate on the nerves until irritation boiled over.
"Um, Teacher? Do we really have to do this? Rather than giving us composure, it feels like it's going to strip away whatever composure we already have."
"That is precisely the beauty of this method. If you can endure something so difficult and uncomfortable, then you'll be able to maintain composure in any other situation, won't you?"
"…"
"From now on we'll practice this breathing method every day, so don't worry. It would be good to use it in your ordinary daily life as well."
At Sunya's words, Enede and Adapa once again shared the exact same thought.
Somehow… I think we've been had.
Time continued to flow.
Several months had already passed, and Sunya's lessons grew ever stranger.
He would have them repeat a single action over and over, or practice something called meditation — doing nothing but breathing — or force them into bizarre postures supposedly meant to make the body more flexible. Every one of them was utterly incomprehensible by Adapa's standards of common sense.
…Still, just as he said, I have gained some composure. I suppose that's something.
Having entered the forest to pick a few figs, Adapa found himself comparing who he was now to who he had been before.
Quite apart from the self-reproach of feeling he was wasting time, Adapa had indeed become considerably more composed than before. Irritating things were rarer; his concentration had improved. It might have been his imagination, but even his fundamental temperament seemed calmer.
No — it's not just that.
Lately, he had felt a faint tingling in his lower abdomen. The more he practiced the breathing method, the more it seemed as though something of unknown nature — like a serpent — was growing inside his body.
It was a little alien, but not unpleasant, so he wasn't particularly worried.
But this… I think I can move it?
Adapa shifted the serpent in his lower abdomen into his right hand.
At once, his right hand felt far heavier and denser than before.
On impulse, he struck the tree beside him.
As a demigod, he could ordinarily snap a tree with ease — there was no risk of injuring his hand.
— BOOM!
The result, however, far exceeded Adapa's expectations.
The tree didn't merely break. An explosion erupted, uprooting the surrounding trees as well, and a crater opened in the earth.
"What…?"
Adapa stared at the scene he had created, his mouth hanging open.