Chapter 186: Plum Blossoms and Camellias
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 186: Plum Blossoms and Camellias
After we finished shopping for swimsuits and arrived back at the hotel, a thought suddenly occurred to me.
…Did I really need to go? I feel like they would’ve been fine without me.
I mean, everyone tried on various things and picked them out, but in the end, they all chose their swimsuits on their own and didn’t even show me what they looked like on.
If I think of it purely as a trip to clear my head, it wasn’t a total waste, but…
It left me with a bit of a strange feeling.
If I had sent a clone instead and focused on my training, I wouldn’t be feeling this way.
“Sssst.”
No, that’s not right.
Of course, I knew better than to think like that.
However, the failure and anxiety I had experienced for the first time in a long while made it impossible to stop the restlessness that had been simmering beneath the surface.
I wanted to let my guard down and genuinely hang out with the girls, but no matter how hard I tried, the anxiety nestled in a corner of my mind wouldn’t disappear.
It might be just a little bit now, but what if these brief moments gathered and grew into something massive? What if I fell just a tiny bit short and couldn’t overcome the calamities of the future?
The feeling eased slightly when I was with them, but once I was alone, complicated thoughts filled my head again.
I felt like I’d feel better if I could just swing a sword and immerse myself in training.
Should I go out and train right now?
Yes, that sounded like a plan.
* * *
I headed to the clearing on the mountain behind the Academy where I always trained alone.
There wasn’t a specific reason I had to come all the way here, but perhaps because it was familiar, I felt like swinging my sword here would alleviate some of this suffocating feeling.
I swung.
In the fight against that villain who manipulated gravity, my sword ultimately failed to leave a single scratch on him.
Because my sword path had become a mess halfway through, even the flowers that used to bloom crudely had stopped appearing altogether.
“Huuph!”
The sword felt light, but in a bad way.
There couldn’t be anything wrong with Ruyi, so it meant that I, the one wielding it, wasn’t putting any weight into the strike.
I increased Ruyi’s weight to the limit of what I could handle and forced myself to swing the heavy blade.
No, this wasn’t it. I had failed before by swinging like this in the past.
— The Will of the Saint is…
— Stop. Leave him be. This isn’t something that can be corrected just because someone tells him.
The flowers wouldn’t bloom.
The tip of my sword wavered from my impatience. My balance crumbled under the heavy weight of the swings, turning my swordsmanship into nothing more than an ugly struggle.
I had to calm down. Yes, I needed to stay calm. I knew that much in my head.
“You seem anxious.”
I leaped back to create distance at the sudden sound of a voice.
“Su… Ha-ru Senior?”
My Master was standing there.
No, seriously, I never even called her “Master” back in the day, so why do I keep almost making that mistake?
“Yes, Junior Kang So-hyun. I’ve unintentionally caught you practicing alone again. I was going to walk past and pretend I didn’t see you, but you seemed so unfocused today that I couldn’t help but speak up.”
“Ah, this is embarrassing.”
I wasn’t just being polite.
It was the same with anyone else, but she was the last person I wanted to show such a disheveled state to.
“I thought you were just a pure genius, but I guess that’s not entirely the case. Then again, it’s not rare for someone to be unable to overcome their own talent and be consumed by it.”
“Pardon?”
She slowly drew the sword from her waist.
“…Senior?”
“Fortunately, it looks like I can be of some help. Care for a spar?”
The moment she drew her sword, the aura surrounding her changed.
She was no longer the girl who chatted almost too cheerfully about wanting to learn swordsmanship from me.
A woman with the presence of a true martial artist, sharp as a well-honed blade, was looking at me.
— So-hyun! Let’s spar! When you’ve got something on your mind, nothing beats a guided spar with a master!
It was a scene I missed so achingly much.
Whenever I’d flatly refuse and try to run away, she’d swing her sword at me, saying that action speaks louder than words.
And if my guess was right, she was going to do the exact same thing now.
She used to do this whenever I looked depressed.
“…I’m fine.”
Even so, I replied with a faint hope that she might decline, since we weren’t as close as we used to be yet.
A person whose body wasn’t even fully recovered shouldn’t be sparring.
“No more talk…!”
Well, she didn’t exactly live up to my expectations.
I parried the frontal strike.
— Swinging with pure strength isn’t always the answer. Sometimes, softness overcomes strength.
“Good judgment! Well done!”
I shouldn’t try to block all the consecutive strikes; I had to mix in evasions and neutralize the most threatening parts of the sequence.
— It would be great if every strike in a combo was a threat, but in reality, fifty percent of them are just feints. It’s important to identify and prepare for the truly dangerous attacks.
Sword clashed against sword, the blades ringing out in a cry.
If I had to fight anyone else, I wouldn’t be able to display this level of technique.
However, because I was someone who had watched and memorized her familiar sword paths hundreds, thousands of times—even while grumbling about how annoying it was—I could hold my own.
Because her sword was being swung with consideration for her opponent so that I could block it, I was able to receive her strikes like this.
They were similar.
The sword she wielded was incredibly similar to mine.
No, to be precise, my sword had sought to resemble hers.
She smiled.
“As I thought, it’s violent, but it’s very similar to the sword I wield. I can tell even better now that we’re actually clashing.”
Her stance shifted slightly.
Until just now, her attacks had been basic techniques containing the fundamentals of swordsmanship, but the stance she took now was a preparatory move to draw out the realm beyond that.
The Plum Blossom Sword Technique.
It was her specialty—a Taoist and beautiful style of swordsmanship.
“It might not be cool to act like I know everything, but I think I understand a little. I used to have similar worries once. You’re anxious, aren’t you?”
She was right. I was still anxious. I had swung my sword to become even a little stronger and to relieve my frustration, but if anything, I was now in a state of irritation because I felt even more unpleasant.
…Come to think of it, my worries had faded a bit while we were sparring.
“I actually have something I need to hurry with, too. But, well, there didn’t seem to be an answer, so I was frustrated.”
She was a person who was moving closer to death every day due to an incurable disease.
She was also a woman who, at the end of the swordsmanship she attempted to overcome that fate, reached an answer entirely different from what she had pursued.
She must have been terrified, yet she never showed it until the very end.
“So, what did you do?”
I threw out the question while blocking her strikes.
Our swords, which had no difference in the basics, began to diverge as we moved to the next level.
Her sword was stable and brilliant, but its core was unwavering—like a great tree in full, radiant bloom.
In contrast, my sword, which I swung merely to survive, was full of holes—an ugly struggle, a desperate flailing that relied on gambles.
“I just decided to accept it. I realized that even though I had taken the wrong path, this was also a correct answer.”
I see. That’s why your sword draws such a clean path.
“But looking at your sword, I started to think that maybe there isn’t just one right answer.”
I tried to find a way to break through her strikes, but challenging someone who swung their sword faster than me to a battle of wits wasn’t a very wise move.
“The basics are so similar to mine, so why is it so different? I wondered what it was that your sword had that mine didn’t.”
The overflowing scent of plum blossoms made my head spin, and the blooming petals approached me as sharp blades.
“The person who created this swordsmanship must have been even more desperate and cornered than I am. I wondered why they didn’t give up.”
No, the idiot who made this sword did give up. He was a fool who had no memory of ever catching anything he tried to grab, so he struggled because he didn’t want to lose anything else, all while fearing that even that struggle would fail.
“Then I realized. Ah, the desperation felt in that sword stems from fear. It was more terrifying to give up than to resist; he was backed into a corner with nowhere left to run, but even so, there was something he just couldn’t let go of.”
The moment our swords collided, my hand throbbed from being pushed back by her aura.
“You know, right now, there’s nothing but fear in your sword. Where did the Black Camellia go—the one that bloomed so desperately yet beautifully? You’re just swinging wildly now, aren’t you? If you forget what you wanted to put into your sword, nothing will dwell within it.”
I knew.
Naturally, I knew all of that in my head.
But what was I supposed to do when I just couldn’t put it into practice?
“Well, even if I talk about this Taoist stuff, most people would just think, ‘So what?’ right?”
…Huh?
“I’m the same way. What I really want to say starts from here.”
Ah, right. She was this kind of person.
“If you aren’t sure of your sword, swing it until you are. If your sword wavers, swing it until it never wavers again. Since I said I’d learn from you, I’ll stick with you until the end.”
She closed the distance and swung her sword.
I tried to block it, but I was pushed back as I was.
She was a master who would beat a person until they could do it, saying she’d make them keep going until they succeeded.
I felt pain as I was cut by the plum blossoms that pierced through my defense, but I couldn’t let out a cry of pain over something like this.
— Get up instead of wasting time saying it hurts! Don’t feel safe just because you’ve created distance! The longer you stay out of posture, the higher the chance your head will fly off!
“Come on! We’re keeping this going!”
It was a truly ignorant method, but for an idiot like me, this might be just right.
The one-sided spar continued.
Resistance lost its meaning, and as we exchanged strikes several times in a single breath, I no longer had the luxury to think about anything else.
Funny enough, once my mind went blank, I finally found some breathing room.
It was like this back then, too. After getting beaten like a madman, I could sleep soundly without any nightmares.
I didn’t even realize how precious that was at the time.
Experiencing it again, I realized just how valuable it was.
With my mind empty, my body began to move on its own, following instinct.
“Oh?”
It bloomed.
At the tip of my sword, though it wasn’t a plum blossom, a black flower bloomed—a testament to my way of life.
On its own, it was a simple flower that held no fragrance and wasn’t flashy, but this was the life I had walked until now.
“That’s it. First, start by affirming it. Don’t deny it; accept it slowly.”
This wasn’t enough.
But if you asked if I was able to give it my all that day, the answer was no.
Because my sword was looking at many things and deciding on the direction to move forward.
The sword I swung while flustered and hurried didn’t reach, but once I calmed down a bit, there were plenty of better paths.
Adding a Taoist inclination to such a violent sword now would be a bad move, but I had to at least decide where that violence was headed.
I wouldn’t kill the intense murderous intent and curses contained in the sword; instead of scattering them indiscriminately, I would concentrate them.
“Once you affirm and accept it, the next step will naturally become visible.”
Blossoming.
The black flower that had bloomed opened a bit more than before, blooming in profusion.
Still lacking a fragrance of its own, it instead swallowed the scent of the plum blossoms.
Adding to her sword that I had wanted to resemble so much, I added my own movements that she could not perform.
In an instant, the black camellia erased the plum blossoms.
“Excellent.”
— See, you can do it, So-hyun…!
I guess so. Thank you. I think my head has cleared up a bit.
“But that’s that, and I can’t lose a spar! Plum Blossom Fragrance for Ten Thousand Miles!”
“Huh?”
And then, an overwhelming scent of plum blossoms—too much to be swallowed up—swamped me.
Ah, seriously. I was almost touched for a second there.
…She really was this kind of master.
* * *
“Hey, So-hyun, get up already.”
“…I am awake. I’m just in too much pain to get up because of the terrible thing that happened to me yesterday.”
When I woke up, my entire body was aching, without a hint of exaggeration.
Who the hell suddenly fires off an ultimate move like that?
She really is my master, but she’s also a psycho.
“…Why are you smiling like that if you’re in pain?”
I’m smiling? Oh, I am.
Well, I collapsed from exhaustion, but at least I didn’t have any nightmares. And thanks to my empty head, I slept without a single thought, so now I have the mental capacity to look at your faces again.
Even though I couldn’t completely resolve my anxiety, I was able to remind myself of what was precious and what I wanted to protect.
For now, this was enough.
“I just thought that sometimes, this isn’t so bad.”
“…You seem to be in a lot of pain. Can you even go to the beach today?”
“I have to. I’m the one who suggested it, so how can I bail?”
The fortuitous encounter that would make you and me even stronger, and the master of the masked villain, would be waiting for us there.
As I forced myself up, it felt like I could move well enough.
“Let’s go. The others must be waiting.”
Finally, the Academy Summer Vacation Beach Arc begins.