The Rush
Soyeon ducked her head at once.
Of all times... to be seen like this.
She drew her loosened collar closed and lifted a hand to her cheek.
"Wait."
Jihun stopped in front of her. When she saw his hand coming toward her face, Soyeon hunched her shoulders before she could stop herself. He paused. Then he turned his sleeve inside out and wiped the glob of spit from her cheek.
She stood there with her head hanging. Finding the angle awkward, he leaned in closer and studied her face.
"Chin up. Just a little."
Soyeon slowly raised her jaw. Their eyes met at close range. She dropped her gaze in a hurry—and saw what had soaked into his sleeve.
"S-Senior. I'll wipe it. Let me..."
"It's nearly done."
"Your robe..."
Jihun glanced at his own sleeve, then took hold of a clean stretch of cloth.
"It'll wash."
Soyeon couldn't get another word out. While he finished wiping her cheek, she lowered her hands and kept them still. Past his shoulder, one of the women was backing away. The woman traded a look with the other two, then hurried off toward the far side of the training ground.
"You hurt anywhere?"
"N-no. I'm not."
"Good."
Jihun straightened and turned to the women.
"Apologize."
Neither of them answered at once. The one who had grabbed Soyeon's collar glanced at the colleague beside her, then opened her mouth.
"We were only joking a little..."
"Spitting in someone's face is a joke?"
The woman's lips parted and closed. Unlike a moment ago, when she had been grilling Soyeon, she couldn't hold Jihun's eyes for long.
"It was just between us. Soyeon, she also..."
When the woman looked at her, Soyeon clenched her fingers.
"Soyeon also what? I try to let it go, I really do, and this is what I get. Here I thought you were Chinese brats, and you're Japanese? What is this, some ijime crap?"
"...Pardon? What are you even saying..."
Jihun ranted on as if he had lost his mind. Everyone tilted their heads, plainly unable to follow a word of it.
"Anyway! If none of you feel like dying, start with an apology."
Today was a strange day.
The moment I showed up for work, I got threatened: there was some bizarre assembly on, and if I didn't do it properly, I would die. Everyone had come to watch how it would go, and there was my assistant, taking a glob of spit from a pack of women.
Truly incredible personalities. Truly.
Just then a man came trudging up behind those delinquent girls. The realm my spiritual sense picked up was Qi Condensation, second layer. The look of him—a black-haired pretty-boy thug, flashy as a gilded sun—rubbed me the wrong way at once.
"Senior Yuk Jin!"
The woman who had slipped off earlier seemed to have fetched him. Yuk Jin, of all names. Something about the name itself put me off.
The man looked the women over once, then planted himself in front of me.
"I am Yuk Jin, senior disciple of the Medicine Shop. What business do you have with my juniors?"
"Those women spit in my assistant's face. I was in the middle of telling them to apologize."
Yuk Jin looked back and forth between me and Soyeon at my side.
"If my juniors did wrong, you had only to tell me. Grabbing someone else's juniors and talking about killing them—isn't that a bit much?"
"Were the two of us acquainted? So while my junior was being tormented right here, I was supposed to go, 'Hey, you bitches, where's your senior?' and come looking for you first? Is that what you're saying?"
"You seem rather worked up. Do you mean to keep coming at me like that?"
"No. This ends the moment your junior apologizes to mine. Doesn't it?"
Yuk Jin frowned. One of the women behind him, watching his mood, opened her mouth.
"Senior, we were just..."
"Be quiet."
Yuk Jin cut her off and looked me straight in the eye.
"Fellow Daoist, you don't seem to know what face is."
"By face, you mean you're aware that if I don't get an apology right here, the face that gets ruined is mine?"
Yuk Jin snorted.
"And why should I be the one to save that face for you? Are you even stronger than I am?"
What was he saying all of a sudden? We had been talking about face, and he had swerved straight into the law of the jungle. Was this the way of the cultivation world?
"Were we comparing who's stronger? Your people did wrong, so I'm telling them to apologize."
"If you've entered the cultivation world, follow the cultivation world's laws. Stop to argue right and wrong every time something feels unfair, and how do you expect to survive?"
Yuk Jin jerked his chin at Soyeon.
"That child is the same. If it rankles, she should cultivate and pay it back. Hide behind her senior and try to collect apologies, and when will she ever stand on her own?"
Soyeon pressed her lips tight.
"That kid was training alone. The three of them mobbed her and bullied her."
"And so you stepped in, didn't you. My juniors called me as well."
Yuk Jin spread both arms.
"Well? What are you going to do now?"
The woman standing behind him let a small smile slip.
Ah... this is pissing me off. What kind of dogshit logic is this?
The bastard wasn't insisting they had done nothing wrong. He was saying, so what if they had.
"So if you've got strength, you can spit in someone's face?"
"Try and stop them. If you have the ability."
I stared at Yuk Jin. He didn't look the least bit bothered.
"I hear you told my juniors to apologize if they didn't want to die. Funny how well that worked when their realm was lower than yours."
Yuk Jin took a step closer.
"Is it a problem now that I'm here?"
I glared at the man who had closed the distance. For a moment I even considered spitting on him myself.
"So. What will you do? Shall we settle right and wrong with a spar?"
Yuk Jin said it with a greasy smile. In that instant my mouth went bone-dry, and my chest caught fire.
"What's the matter?"
He tilted his head.
"Don't tell me you were only talking big in front of that child."
"Pfft..."
One of the delinquent girls behind him let out a snicker.
I followed Yuk Jin up onto the sparring platform. Face to face, he looked a little bigger than he had a moment ago. His forearms were plenty thick, too.
Haa... I'm actually scared...
Yuk Jin cracked his neck left and right, then raised a hand.
"Ready?"
"R-ready!"
The instant I answered, he formed a hand seal. I saw the flame gathering in his palm and yanked my qi up in a hurry.
Flame balled in his palm and tore loose.
A mass of water formed and shot toward him.
Hiss!
Yuk Jin's fireball punched straight through the water I had thrown and kept on coming.
"The fuck?"
I flung myself sideways. A hot wash of qi grazed my shoulder as my hand hit the floor.
I met it with the counter-element and it still didn't take? Before a gap in raw output like that, type advantage was worthless. Ah... damned cult of pure ability.
Yuk Jin sneered and gathered fire again.
"Well, well. Garbage with a mixed spiritual root, were you?"
A wall of earth rose between us.
Boom!
The wall did nothing at all before it blew apart. A clod of dirt smacked me in the cheek for my trouble.
No choice. I'll have to win this on gear.
I pulled a Protection Talisman from my storage pouch and drove qi into it. In that span Yuk Jin fired another fireball.
Bang!
I covered my face with my arm, then slowly lowered it. This time it wasn't hot, and I didn't eat dirt.
How's that? The taste of capitalism.
I immediately drew a Fire Bullet Talisman and flung it at him. Yuk Jin slammed his palm toward the ground in a hurry. The fire bullet hit the earth wall he had raised and blew away half of it—a wall far thicker than mine had been.
"...A spiritual talisman?"
Yuk Jin looked at me over the broken wall. I pulled out another and attacked before he could form his seal again.
Boom!
Yuk Jin abandoned what was left of the wall and leapt aside. A moment ago he had looked ready to fight with his arms folded, all ease. Now he was moving at a decent clip.
Nice dodge. Dodge this one too.
I threw a Fire Bullet Talisman toward the spot where he was trying to stop. Yuk Jin clenched his teeth and raised another earth wall. I drew one more talisman and sprinted forward, and the instant he lifted his hand from behind the wall, I shot a fire bullet up over it.
"Damn—!"
Yuk Jin fell back, covering his face with both arms.
The outside of the body hardened to iron.
I locked my skin tight and charged in beside the shattered wall. By the time Yuk Jin turned his head, I had already driven my shoulder into his chest.
"Guh—!"
I shoved him back and seized him around the waist.
"You little shit!"
Yuk Jin grabbed my shoulder and shoved. I clutched his collar so I wouldn't be pushed off, and then I gave him a taste of a headbutt.
A hardened brow crashed into his face.
Crack!
Wi Cheongun had stopped his training and was watching the sparring platform.
He had seen Yuk Jin's skill a few times. Among those at Qi Condensation, second layer, the man was fairly good with spell arts. When he had seen the opponent fire a ball of water, he had thought it would be over quickly.
And yet...
The unfamiliar man used spiritual talismans one after another, and in the end he charged Yuk Jin and headbutted him. Yuk Jin took the blow to the nose, staggered, and went down under the man.
"Get off me, you bastard!"
Yuk Jin shoved at the man's face. The man twisted his head and bit Yuk Jin's ear.
"Aaaagh!"
Wi Cheongun's brow twitched.
...His ear?
Yuk Jin even yanked the man's hair, but he couldn't peel him off. If anything the bite on his ear only got harder, and he pounded the floor in a panic.
"I yield! I yield! Let go!"
Only then did the man release him. Wi Cheongun folded his arms.
Judging by spellwork alone, the man was nothing special. But from the moment he started using talismans, he hadn't given Yuk Jin a gap to strike back. And once they were grappling, he hadn't let go until it came to this.
He might be trickier than I thought...
Wi Cheongun committed the man's face to memory. The man got up, panting. Yuk Jin clutched his ear and his nose in turn. Three women ran up and supported him.
"Senior, are you all right?"
"First, let's get down..."
"And where do you think you're going?"
Halfway through brushing the dirt off his clothes, the man looked at the women.
"Not until you apologize."
The women looked at Yuk Jin. He avoided their eyes, pressing a hand to his ear.
"...Apologize."
The three hesitated, then climbed down from the platform. The man followed and stood at Soyeon's side. Seeing the women approach, Soyeon clutched the hem of her robe.
"Soyeon. Earlier... we went too far. I'm sorry."
"S-sorry..."
The last woman only moved her lips. When the man stared straight at her, she bowed her head.
"For spitting on your face... I'm sorry."
Soyeon didn't answer for a while. Then she lifted her head a little and looked at the three of them. This time the women were the ones who dropped their eyes first.
Wi Cheongun watched, then went back to where he had been training.
This Martial Assembly is going to be interesting. And it's already burning this hot.
"Ow."
"I-I'm sorry!"
"N-no. It's fine."
I was sitting in the shade of a tree, leaving my face to Soyeon. She dabbed ointment from a small medicine case and spread it over my cheek.
It didn't hurt much while we were fighting...
Soyeon examined my face up close. For no good reason, I straightened my back a little.
"You're hurt here, too..."
"That much is fine."
Her fingertip brushed it.
"Hss."
"Does it hurt a lot?"
"A... a little?"
I lifted my chin and held still. Soyeon spread the ointment more gently than before. When she even blew on the cut, I didn't know where to look, and turned my eyes toward the branches.
"...Thank you, Senior."
"It was nothing."
"You fought because of me, and you even got hurt like this..."
Soyeon stopped the hand that had been applying the ointment.
"Getting hurt over someone like me... your clothes getting dirty, too... I'm sorry..."
"Why are you apologizing out of nowhere? The one who took it was you, Miss Soyeon— no. Junior Soyeon."
"Um... Senior, would it be all right if I washed that robe for you? I'm so... grateful... if you'd let me do something, anything... I think I'd really like that."
"Then I'll leave it to you. Tomorrow's fine?"
"Yes! I'll wash it clean and bring it back."
Soyeon nodded at once. A moment ago she had looked ready to cry, and now she was smiling that brightly just because he had let her do one load of laundry.
Why would anyone bully a kid this good?
The heat rose in me again. What face would those bitches make if Soyeon crushed them at the Martial Assembly? Would they try to call that guy again—Yuk Jin, or was it Ok Jin?
"Junior Soyeon."
"Yes, Senior."
"Let's beat those bitches at the Martial Assembly."
Soyeon's eyes went wide.
"M-me? Could I... actually do it...?"
"You're both first layer, aren't you. What's there you can't beat?"
Soyeon looked down at the medicine case in her hands. She was quiet for a while, then answered in a small voice.
"I... do want to win, but..."
I waited.
"That's why I came out early today... and earlier my Fireball Art went well, too. Better than usual... I even hit the stone pillar properly..."
She was starting to tear up. I took a True Origin Pill from my storage pouch and held it out.
"Here... eat this, too... I... I'm no good at spells, and there's a lot I... don't know, but... I'll help you however I can, in every way I have. So don't cry."
The moment she saw the pill, Soyeon waved both hands.
"S-Senior. This is far too expensive..."
"Ahem. Refuse it, and what happens to the heart of the person giving it? Take it."
Soyeon hesitated, then accepted the True Origin Pill from my palm.
"Thank you... I'm... I'm so glad I met you, Senior... hic... h-hiiing... I-I'm sorry for crying..."
And then she started to cry.
