Chapter 217: Jeon Seoha
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 217: Jeon Seoha
Trauma is what people commonly call the psychological anxiety that arises when extreme stress from a past experience is relived through a similar situation.
The word 'trauma' might sound dramatic, but everyone has at least one.
Being stung by a bee as a child and still being afraid of them as an adult, or being fine with other hospitals but having your heart pound whenever you go to the dentist.
But usually, the symptoms aren't that severe. At most, you might get nervous or break out in a cold sweat.
But my master was different.
“Master...?”
“Hah, hah, hah...!”
Cold sweat poured down her pale face like rain.
Her slender body trembled pitifully, and she was slumped on the floor, gasping for breath—a clear case of hyperventilation.
“Master!”
Panicked, I rushed to her side.
Her face was burning up, but her hands were as cold as ice.
Her eyes couldn't even focus properly. Her condition was serious, so I was about to call an ambulance, but...
Grab.
“N-no...”
My master seized my wrist with a trembling hand.
“Hospital... no...”
Thud.
After just those two phrases, she fainted.
I checked her pulse, but I hadn't learned anything in that area, so I couldn't tell what was wrong.
Common sense dictated I should take her to a hospital, but the look in her eyes had been too desperate.
‘Sigh...’
I had no choice but to give her some holy water as a temporary measure and lay her down on the bedding in the corner of the office.
As I did, a pleasant scent from the blanket wafted past my nose.
‘What is this? I feel like I've smelled it before.’
Ah, I remember now. It was similar to the scent I sometimes caught from Noel. I think I smelled it on Lumina, too.
It was probably a scent unique to beast-kin.
Anyway, after that, I spent a frantic time taking care of my master, placing a wet towel on her forehead and infusing her with Vajra Ki.
Of course, Vajra Ki didn't have healing properties like divine power. At best, it could replenish some of her energy.
It was one of the miscellaneous skills I'd picked up after reaching the third star of the Formless Vajra Art.
For reference, most of the techniques from the Formless Vajra Art I'd learned were Aura arts, which only unleashed their true power once a practitioner reached the Transcendent Realm or higher.
But how could a mere Peak Realm master like me, who couldn't even wield Aura, possibly bring out their full potential?
Of course, I was plenty strong as I was, but it felt lacking to be called a divine art.
‘When my master wakes up, I should ask her if there's a way to reach the Transcendent Realm.’
Of course, something like that probably didn't exist, but it wouldn't hurt to ask.
Anyway, perhaps thanks to the holy water, my master's complexion looked much better than before. She seemed to be sweating less, too.
I gently pressed the space between her furrowed brows, and her expression relaxed.
Mhm, can't have wrinkles forming on that pretty face.
And so, I spent a long time holding my master's hand.
Of course, it wasn't to satisfy any selfish desires. Physical contact was simply indispensable for infusing her with my ki.
As my palms grew sweaty, the hands of the clock ticked steadily onward.
*
A child's existence is born of a parent's desire.
Therefore, parents must take full responsibility for the child they bring into the world.
This is a matter of course, but just as the world doesn't always follow reason, for every loved child, there is also a hated one.
Just as light and darkness are inseparable.
Unfortunately, Jeon Seoha was one such child.
Her mother was a gisaeng at Myeongwolheon (明月轩), a high-class establishment frequented by politicians and businessmen.
Of course, she was not a prostitute who sold her body, but a performer who offered laughter, music, and dance.
Unfortunately, she caught the eye of the Heavenly Lord, one of the leaders of the Triad, and a single night of coercion left her pregnant with a daughter named Jeon Seoha.
This threw the Celestial Clan (天), one of the three factions that made up the Triad, into an uproar.
Of course, in this day and age, an illegitimate child wasn't such a big deal. In fact, since the Silver Wolf Tribe was known for having few children, it should have been a cause for celebration.
The problem, however, was that Jeon Seoha's mother was a human, not a beast-kin.
The elders of the Celestial Clan, who sought to protect the pure wolf bloodline, rose up in protest.
The backlash from the family, and indeed the entire tribe, grew fiercer by the day, but the Heavenly Lord still acknowledged Jeon Seoha as his daughter.
No one dared to question the decision made by the pack's master.
After many twists and turns, Jeon Seoha was officially registered with the family, but no one welcomed her.
-Filthy half-breed.
-Ugh, she smells human.
-To think something like that is a Silver Wolf. It's the end of days.
-What on earth was the Heavenly Lord thinking...?
-Tsk.
This blatant hostility was directed at a young Jeon Seoha, who had just started to babble.
The Heavenly Lord did not care for his daughter.
If he had been the caring type, he wouldn't have forced himself on a woman in the first place. He was a complete bystander.
And so, Jeon Seoha and her mother were abandoned in a den of beasts, surrounded by enemies.
Every day was a continuous, hellish torment, but Jeon Seoha could endure it.
Because she had a mother who loved her more than anyone.
She could bear the scorn and neglect of the adults and the vicious bullying from children her age, as long as her mother was there.
But.
-...Mom?
Her mother could not. Her frail human body couldn't withstand the torment from the beast-kin. The pregnancy and birth had been unwanted.
Nevertheless, she loved her daughter. She had endured for years on the strength of her maternal love, but even that had reached its limit.
In the end, she chose to flee the family, leaving her young daughter behind. She couldn't escape with her child. If she tried to run away with a daughter already registered in the family, a pursuit team would surely come after her.
And so, Jeon Seoha was left alone.
The fear of being alone, the sorrow of being abandoned by her mother—it all became a dagger that stabbed mercilessly into her heart.
-...Mom.
That was the moment she fell into a true hell.
Even so, Jeon Seoha did not let go of the thread of hope.
She firmly believed that her mother would one day come back for her.
But the wait stretched from a month to a year, then five, ten, and finally fifteen years, until the little girl had become a woman.
-...
Only then did Jeon Seoha realize.
Ah, Mother isn't coming back. I'm going to be alone forever.
In that moment, a suffocating loneliness crushed her.
She couldn't bear it any longer.
-Hah, hah, hah...!
So she ran.
For hundreds of kilometers, she crossed rivers and countless mountains, finally reaching the country of South Korea.
Without the superior physical abilities of the Silver Wolf Tribe and the magic and special powers she had coincidentally awakened, she would have long since become a meal for a magical beast.
The South Korea she arrived in was unfamiliar.
Of course, China had been just as strange.
To her, who had lived her entire life practically imprisoned within her family's compound, everything was foreign.
Fortunately, thanks to having learned various foreign languages since she was young, the language barrier wasn't much of an issue.
English, Japanese, and Korean.
Jeon Seoha's foreign language skills were comparable to a native speaker's.
Of course, this wasn't due to her linguistic talent. It was the product of abuse under harsh corporal punishment.
If she failed to memorize the assigned characters for the day, she would be whipped and starved.
To Jeon Seoha, studying was a form of torment. How could the process of forcibly cramming knowledge into her head through fear and hardship be enjoyable?
But to survive, she had to use the knowledge she had learned.
Getting a job could lead to her family tracking her down, so she sold the valuables she had secretly brought with her to raise funds.
They were uncut gems, so there was no risk of them being treated as stolen goods.
Even so, she was poor. She hadn't had the luxury of packing much.
She stayed in the cheapest places she could find, and when money was tight, she would raid a nearby loan shark's office and steal their cash.
She opened a sword dojo to avoid suspicion, since it would be strange for someone with no proper job to suddenly have money.
Naturally, she had no intention of accepting any students.
Not only did she have no plans to run the dojo properly, but she didn't think she was skilled enough to teach anyone in the first place.
Besides, no one in their right mind would attend a shabby dojo tucked away in a slum.
So there was no need to worry.
That's what she thought.
-What's this? Is anyone here?
One day, someone not in their right mind appeared.
To think someone would actually want to join such a rundown dojo...
It was suspicious.
The thought that he might be a spy sent by her family crossed her mind.
‘...Should I kill him here?’
But doing so would only announce her location.
For now, her only option was to accept him as a student. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
If she tried to run now, she would surely be caught before long. So she needed to extract as much information from him as possible.
But there was one problem. What if he ran away and reported her presence?
It was a checkmate. She couldn't kill him, nor could she run away now.
Jeon Seoha quietly lay down.
Diring-
A notification for a large deposit arrived on her cracked phone screen.
‘...Beef.’
The thought of being dragged back to that hell was terrifying, but she wanted to eat her fill of beef before she went. Back there, starving had been a daily routine.
That night, Jeon Seoha cried as she ate imported beef she'd bought from a nearby butcher shop.
But even after several days, what she had feared did not happen. Instead, a different kind of change occurred in her daily life.
Her first student, Kang Hyun-woo, was a strange person.
A mage learning swordsmanship?
Even if her own common sense was narrow and biased, she knew that mages didn't learn swordsmanship.
What's more, she was surprised by how quickly he learned.
He called her 'Master.'
But why?
She hadn't taught him anything special. Everyone knew the importance of fundamentals.
It wouldn't have been strange for him to suspect her of being a fraud for not teaching him a single martial art.
But he didn't.
He might grumble, but he approached every lesson with a serious attitude.
Though he did throw in some strange jokes from time to time...
Honestly, it wasn't bad. In fact, it was closer to good.
Even if they weren't funny, it felt like warmth was seeping into the cold dojo.
Above all, his eccentric behavior helped her slowly forget her anxiety. Every little thing he did told her he wasn't a spy from her family.
She had never thought she could form a bond with someone in this strange, foreign land she had fled to.
She never knew when or where she might be dragged back to her family, and she didn't know who might be a spy, so she had been careful not to get close to others.
But.
‘Just one person...’
Maybe it would be okay to get close to just one person?
When he gave her a snack as a gift, a strange feeling would wash over her for the rest of the day.
‘...It's delicious.’
She closed her eyes as she chewed on the beef jerky.
It was the first gift she had received since her mother ran away.
Even though she knew her mother had abandoned her, she couldn't help but miss her.
Knowing she would have to live her entire life without forming any deep connections, she couldn't help but cling to the bonds of the past.
Then, suddenly, the face of her one and only student came to mind.
What if he abandoned her, just like her mother did?
All she had to offer him were the family's martial arts she had been forced to learn, the insights she'd gained fighting magical beasts on her way to Korea, and a few miscellaneous skills.
With his talent, he would surely absorb all of that in no time.
And then what?
Would he have any reason to stay with a master who had nothing left to teach?
It was a foolish question.
He was a mage, after all.
He would eventually return to the Magic Tower, and he would never come back to a shabby dojo like this.
The thought made her throat tighten and her chest feel like it would burst. Just like that day her mother left her, her hands and feet trembled, and she couldn't breathe.
But she had nothing to give him.
All she could do was beg, just like she did as a child.
‘...Don't go.’
Please.
I'll do anything.
Don't abandon me.
Her pitiful cry echoed in the void.
“I'm not heartless enough to abandon a patient, so you don't have to worry.”
Whoosh-
In that moment, the darkness that had enveloped her surroundings lifted, and her vision cleared.
She squinted at the fluorescent light for a moment before her eyes met with Kang Hyun-woo's, who was holding her hand.
“By the way, were you serious about doing anything?”
Her still-booting brain belatedly grasped the situation, and she looked around.
The warmth enveloping her hand, the words she had mumbled in her sleep...
Before long, Jeon Seoha's scream echoed from inside the office.