Stripped of Garments, Hair Unbound and Wearing White — Tal-Ui-dae-baek (2)

Just as Instructor Shim Jae-gyeong had said, the Martial Arts Club was a organization sustained by the full backing of the Hwadam Army.

And yet, despite that fact, it was hardly a popular club. You only had to glance at the number of cadets actually enrolled to see it: one supervising instructor, two assistant instructors, and sixteen cadets formally on the books.

And those sixteen weren't the count for a single year. That was the total across every remaining year and all the graduating class, current first-years excluded.

Their unofficial nickname, "the Handful Squad," hadn't been earned for nothing.

"So I'm in on the spot?"

"As long as you have no intention of refusing."

Which raised the question—would the crowd gathered to watch the club's recruitment showcase really be that small?

"Hey! New kid's here!"

"For real? Is he actually challenging??"

"Him, him, that's him!"

"Who's that?"

"The one who soloed a Yeommae this term!"

Astonishingly, there were plenty of onlookers.

The reason was remarkably simple. The Martial Arts Club taught its members how to fight up close—one-on-one or one-against-many—and that meant, in practice…

"The instructors fight the cadets!"

"Dude, hurry up! A first-year dark horse is going up against an instructor!"

"Dance club showcase? Who cares about that? Get over here!"

You got to watch fights, legally.

That was why the place had erupted the moment the instructor called me into the ring. Human beings really did love watching a scrap.

"Er, um. From what I heard, upperclassmen usually take the challengers at these showcases…"

"That's for some ordinary, clumsy first-year. First person to pass the opening class deserves to face me—unless you have no conscience at all?"

Attention had already landed on me in full. Backing out now would only send the rumors spreading in stranger directions.

I stepped into the ring without protest. "Ring" was generous—it was really just a circle someone had drawn in powdered lime.

"Draw that Ssangyonggeom. Show me."

"Ah—are we even allowed to use it outside of class?"

"Isn't a club activity a class? Besides, I'll take responsibility."

Well, if she said so.

When an instructor said they'd take responsibility, they truly meant it.

When I'd lost control of the Ssangyonggeom on the very first day of class and burned away a chunk of forest, not a single word of censure had come down on me. I only found out later that Instructor Shim had taken the formal reprimand and the pay cut herself—and not once did she ever let it show.

"So far I can only handle one blade."

"Knowing your own limits is a very wise thing. Just the one, then."

I undid the Ssangyonggeom slung across my back. It took longer than it used to—where the old seals had been three layers of cloth, cord, and silk, the current ones numbered seven in all.

There was a bitter irony in it. The moment I'd gained even partial control over the Ssangyonggeom, the brass had gone and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠reinforced the bindings.

"Wrapped up tighter than a mummy. It'd wear a man out just looking at it."

"It would be a problem if someone got covetous, wouldn't it, ma'am."

Part of it was wariness about me wielding them as I pleased, sure. But the root cause was theft prevention, plain and simple.

There was no helping it. Even if no single incident sums up the whole, this cohort had already produced a lunatic who stole a Yeommae in the very first week. And the Ssangyonggeom under my control happened to have exactly the kind of power and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠appearance to set certain idiots' hearts racing…

The soldiers from the Office of Inspection and Safety—practically old friends with me by now—had wept tears of blood as they laid the anti-theft charms over them.

Anyone who tried to touch the Ssangyonggeom without my permission would now be roasted by those charms before they ever laid a hand on a blade. Crisp and golden, all the way through.

"I'll play with you next time, Heuk-ah."

"I shall wait."

I drew out Baek-ah alone and left Heuk-ah wrapped back in his cloth, set beside my bag at the edge of the ring.

Shff. Judging by the color of their name tag, a senior had come to stand directly behind Heuk-ah.

"Leave its protection—and its surveillance—to me, junior."

"Thank you."

The surveillance wasn't strictly necessary, but it couldn't hurt. I gave a small bow and eased Baek-ah out of her scabbard.

The draw was unlike any ordinary sword's, and the crowd around us let out a chorus of oooohs.

"Need time?"

"Mm."

The scabbard was too long, as ever, so I simply tossed it behind me.

The senior shot a quick glance around, then tapped the scabbard with the tip of their sleeve—tck, tck, tck—and nudged it over to sit beside Heuk-ah.

"Give me five breaths."

Yes. That was all it took for Baek-ah's power to come flooding into view—every last scale standing proud on my skin, the price of carrying her strength within me.

"Very well."

According to the instructors, these scales were a kind of byproduct—a residue left behind as my body forcibly grew to withstand the Ssangyonggeom's power.

"Haaah."

The scales caused no harm in themselves, and once the power withdrew they settled back down on their own, so there was no need to remove them. In the end, all it cost was putting up with people's stares—and considering there were soldiers who walked around with animal ears and tails, that was hardly a hardship.

No, what demanded my real attention was the Ssangyonggeom's power itself. No matter how many times I carried it in my body, it refused to feel familiar.

'Still, I'm starting to get the feel for it.'

Those three days in the hospital bed.

I hadn't let a single hour of them go to waste. The tightly negotiated agreement with the military brass that let me practice controlling the Ssangyonggeom was one fruit of it.

'Up to here… yes, right up to here.'

The instructor had once called this power a "natural disaster."

I no longer tried to hold the whole disaster within me.

Only as much as was necessary. Only exactly what I could bear, drawn in and contained within my flesh. That much was the achievement I'd won after bleeding for it twice.

"That'll do."

Even that much had sharpened my physical abilities in visible leaps. For instance: Baek-ah, who'd once needed both my hands just to keep her balanced, could now be lifted in one.

Of course, the movie-hero flourish of spinning a blade this way and that across your fingers was a pipe dream. Skill was one thing, but the sword was simply too long—that was the biggest problem.

Every little movement ended in a tak against the floor, a tak against the ground. Pulling off anything stylish would take a great deal more practice.

"Good. I'll yield the first move. Come at me."

Enough preamble—this was the real start.

I didn't turn down the instructor's courtesy.

Object-type Phantasms might grant a base level of proficiency, but a weapon you'd never touched before in your life carried its own foreign weight.

My legs stepped forward, light and measured. Each stride fed into the next, gathering speed, until I was outright running.

Whish!

The opener was a textbook downward cut.

The instructor caught it on her flail. The steel joint where the child-whip connected to the chain took Baek-ah's edge square on.

CLANG!

"Heh. That's a wicked amount of weight you're swinging."

Naturally, a blade driving straight down couldn't argue with an obstacle in its path—the line skewed sideways and, in the end, was shoved off. As the sword slid away, my arm was carried with it, tipping out to the side.

WHUMP!

In that instant the flail launched skyward like a geyser, the child-whip at the end of its chain shrieking a threat as it came hunting for my jaw.

Zzeek!

Drawing my right foot back was enough to angle my upper body clear. The dodge sufficed.

Fwp. Exaggerating only slightly, the child-whip passed right in front of my nose. The spikes and studs studding it were deeply unsettling up close.

"Isn't that a bit too dangerous?!"

"Don't worry. I'm going easy on you."

It was certainly a speed too halfhearted to be called her real effort.

But no matter how slowly that thing swung, with that much mass and that construction, a hit would be agonizing. A strike to the head or another vital point, doubly so.

"From where I'm standing, that does not look like 'easy'!"

I brought my retreated foot forward again. Whip. My arm, still tipped sideways from being deflected, moved from the horizontal into a slightly offset line.

Tak!

Instructor Shim cracked her wrist, swinging the flail's shaft around. The whip whirled once like a Ferris wheel and slammed into Baek-ah's flat.

I tried to bear it, but the direction of force was hopeless. Baek-ah's blade and my arm both floated up, weightless.

Then her wrist turned the flail's long handle into a spear. Meaning: she was thrusting the section without the chained whip straight at me.

"Kkh…!"

The reflexes 'Yahui' had left behind—the survival instinct that was now as good as my own—saved my life. My head tipped aside, sliding past the flail's tip.

Fwiiish!

My arm and sword, flung skyward as if cheering manzai-style by Instructor Shim, adjusted their blade angle at the last moment and came down in a cut after all.

THUNK!

But she was an instructor for a reason. Even inside that hair-thin gap, she retracted the flail with a yanking pull, and from where I stood the weapon had gone horizontal across her grip, blocking Baek-ah's blade.

Crunch. Thanks to that, my edge bit properly into the flail's wooden shaft. About halfway through.

"You little maniac—!"

A little more force. If I'd pushed even a fraction harder, that shaft would have split clean in two. Instructor Shim knew it as clearly as I did.

So I hastily relaxed my grip, and she twisted the flail with a flick of her wrist to shake the sword loose. The gouge carved into the shaft was all too visible.

"…Enough. We'd better stop here. If I don't die, my weapon will."

"…Understood, ma'am."

Clutching the flail to her chest like a beloved child, the instructor made the call. The Phantasm shrouding her face had no way to show it, yet something oddly tearful still came through—she clearly adored the thing.

"What? It's over?"

"Huh? What even happened?"

Behind the sniffling instructor, the spectators were muttering among themselves.

Apparently none of them had caught what had just unfolded. All they'd registered was that the bout had ended after three or four exchanges.

"Hrmm. Well, I can't get a proper read off the Ssangyonggeom… Cadet, I'll lend you a different weapon—willing to fight with that instead? Truth is, sparring at these showcases isn't only for the crowd's benefit. We need to see talent where it lives."

"If that's the purpose, I have no objection—but you're lending me the weapon?"

"Of course. How many cadets do you imagine carry an object-weapon-type Phantasm like yours?"

Not something I'd ever considered, but she had a point. In our platoon alone, Kim To-eun was the only one who'd chosen an object-weapon type.

"What are my options?"

"Pick from over there."

Enough said—I accepted the offer.

There was no way around it. More important than wielding the Ssangyonggeom was building my own skill and finding out exactly where it stood.

'Skip your fundamentals, and sooner or later something goes catastrophically wrong…'

Look at movies, comics, novels—count on one hand the characters who didn't die showing off with a fancy weapon and no basics underneath.

In live combat, maybe things were different. But in training, the right call was to build real fundamentals rather than lean on a weapon.

"You—you do know not to wreck it, right?"

"Of course."

"Understood."

The Ssangyonggeom blessed my choice as well. There was the faintest trace of reluctance, perhaps, but unmistakably a sense of acknowledging the necessity.

And so I picked out one of the object-type weapons the Martial Arts Club kept on hand and went another round with the instructor.

The result was, frankly, pitiful.

"I surrender. Surrendering now."

"Why so suddenly? You look like you've still got stamina left."

"I could dodge a hundred more times, ma'am, but dodging is all I'm doing…"

With the cheat-tier weapon called the Ssangyonggeom taken out of the equation, the gap in raw fundamentals reared its head in earnest. Everything I threw was blocked, or worse, answered with a counterattack—an ugly pattern that repeated itself over and over.

On top of that, the current me was missing the physical enhancement the Ssangyonggeom provided, which maximized the disadvantage of my build, too.

Even swinging Baek-ah, my attacks had been batted aside with ease; strip the enhancement away and I might as well have been flailing a pool noodle.

At this rate, a hundred challenges would win me nothing. Well—give me a hundred challenges and I might manage something by the end of them, but as of right now it was hopeless.

"The problem is that your attacks are far too honest. When you studied combat sports, did they never teach you how to actually strike?"

"We're still on basic stances and breakfalls."

Practical Combat class had covered the fundamentals—a basic punch, an uppercut, a hook. But holding up having one stance corrected as knowing how to hit someone was a stretch.

"What? No—wait, what?"

"Did I say something wrong?"

"No, no, no. I mean—cadet. Did you never go to a taekwondo school, or a boxing gym, or any kind of athletic training before you came here?"

"No, ma'am. We couldn't afford it."

"…"

At my answer, Instructor Shim fell silent for a long while. Beneath the Phantasm, with no expression muscles to speak of, the sheer depth of her brooding showed through all the same. It had been like that earlier too—strange, fascinating stuff.

"…Right. Fair enough. It happens. And if you never learned, then you just learn, don't you!"

CRUNCH!

"You enroll in our club and learn it here—what's the problem! Am I right, cadet?"

"Uh, um. Yes, ma'am."

Having bellowed that, Instructor Shim withdrew part of the Phantasm draped over her body.

Despite what had amounted to twenty minutes of tag, the instructor's face was utterly fresh—unlike mine, caked in dirt and dust. Truly, an instructor was an instructor.

"I'm not joking. The only place in the entire Special Military Academy where you can learn cold-weapon techniques is, for all practical purposes, this club."

She kept talking even as she said it.

On its face, a sentence that made the prospects of a cold-weapon soldier sound bleak indeed.

"That's largely because the Hwadam Army's core doctrine was built around firearms. When you've got such a convenient tool, who in their right mind reaches for something ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠more dangerous and more cumbersome?"

Then Instructor Shim's thick hands came together in a clap. Clap. Every gaze in the room swung toward her.

"Anyone thinking exactly that—go educate yourselves on 'high-risk Dimension Gates,' starting right now."

High-risk Dimension Gates. The term for any gate classified separately because the otherworld creatures inside ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠averaged Grade 7 or higher.

They were also the duty stations where Academy graduates—that is, the Mobile Special Task Force—were deployed most often.

"A fair number of high-risk gates make firearm use difficult, or flat-out impossible. Which means personnel who can keep fighting without a gun are welcome anywhere. All the more so because supply falls hopelessly short of demand."

Somewhere along the way, the instructor's audience had shifted from me to the surrounding crowd.

"There are plenty of reasons the Academy's formal curriculum doesn't include these martial arts… you can look all that up yourselves later. The question that matters right now is whether it's worth braving the danger to learn close-quarters combat. Right?"

The instructor's finger tapped against her own rank insignia. Rank—the single most important thing in the army, or so it seemed, because the room went quiet.

"Because of the special demands of field operations, the Hwadam Army doesn't hand out promotions simply for years served and merits earned. Instead, pay rises within the same rank depending on your years and the operations you've carried out…"

Instructor Shim did not betray that expectation. She kept right on being brazenly, unapologetically explicit.

Salary gaps. The treatment afforded to someone serving as a specialist combat asset. All the questions too awkward to ask came pouring out of the instructor's mouth in a steady stream. And coming from an active-duty soldier, the information carried real weight.

"And that's not all! As I said before, we're trusted to recruit and raise talent the force can't get enough of—which is why our club receives the Hwadam Army's full, unqualified support."

On and on it went, an inventory of the teaching and privileges that came with joining the Martial Arts Club.

Want to try any weapon at all? They'd headhunt and invite a specialist user to teach it. Unlimited selection chances at object-weapon-type Phantasms, even for first-years. Donations and subsidies flowing in until the club was flat-out rich. And not merely rich—whenever a Dimension Gate suitable for field experience cropped up, they got first-priority allocation. Get injured, and you'd be front of the line for treatment from those rarest of treasures, healing-type Phantasms.

Every benefit matched the original work's description exactly.

"Um, Instructor?"

By that point, though, something was starting to make me uneasy. I prodded the instructor with a very small voice.

"Are we allowed to be this… transparent about it?"

"You've got it backwards, cadet. This much is the minimum."

"Pardon?"

"Look at our numbers."

"Ah."

Fair enough—the finest perks in the world meant nothing to someone with no intention of fighting themselves. For me, whose choices had been erased by the Ssangyonggeom, it was simply good news.

"Still, with treatment this good, you'd think plenty would sign up…"

"Oh, they come. The problem is they all run away afterward. Same reason there's no formal curriculum despite the talent shortage. Too damn many of them bolt."

"Aha…"

Completely convinced.

I returned the borrowed weapon and collected my bag, which I'd flung to the edge of the ring. Twenty straight minutes of sprinting had left me starving.

Even once I settled on a club, I'd have to wait until Friday, and I'd already sat through my final-confirmation showcase. Which meant: cafeteria, snack, done.

Whump.

"You're joining our club, obviously."

"I don't exactly have options, what with the Ssangyonggeom. Also, you're heavy…"

As she said it, Instructor Shim had come over and thrown an arm around my shoulders. I wasn't exactly small in height or build either, but in front of her I simply couldn't hold my own.

'By the time I finish growing, our eyes should at least be level, though…'

Whether I'd ever catch up to those Pacific-wide shoulders was another question. That was natural-born skeletal muscle if I'd ever seen it.

I wilted for no good reason, hunching one shoulder. Would training hard at least widen them a little?

"Chick."

Then, letting her weight settle onto my side, the instructor spoke the endearment quietly. Quiet enough that I barely caught it.

"Sorry about this, but could you support me for a bit?"

"Pardon?"

"Tal-Ui-dae-baek's usage time just ran out."

For the record, Tal-Ui-dae-baek was the name of the Phantasm Instructor Shim wielded. After our first class ended, I'd looked it up on my own, curious about what it actually was.

As the story went, it was a Phantasm born of a Joseon king's prank, fused with the era's perception of—and terror toward—ghosts.

"…What should I do?"

"My left leg won't take weight properly. I'll handle walking so it doesn't show—you just need to hold me up."

But that wasn't what mattered right now.

Listening to her, a line I'd once read in a comic flashed through my mind. It went: Academy instructors are, for the most part, people who worked in the field and ended up on rear-echelon duty for one reason or another.

'And that reason is usually—'

A physical or mental disability.

Personnel who could no longer run the field, yet too valuable to let rot on a shelf, were put to work cultivating the next generation of talent.

"Understood."

My mouth had gone abruptly bitter.

Just when things seemed to be going smoothly, this school had a way of dragging reality back into view.

This was the road I would have to walk.

One of the incidents recorded in the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty. It was no supernatural event, but it offers a window into the image people of that era held of ghosts and demons.

The name Tal-Ui-dae-baek appears nowhere in the Annals; it is a name this novel has granted arbitrarily.