Growth Period (2)

It took me two years just to beat Ger.

But winning wasn't enough. The hunger still burning inside me hadn't been satisfied.

"What are you gonna do with me?"

"What do you mean, do with you?"

Then a thought struck me.

Even if I earned their recognition — would the trauma carved into this soul actually disappear?

I'd already walked that road once before. Using loneliness as fuel to push myself forward. And where had that gotten me?

Had the loneliness gone away?

Looking at what I was doing now, the answer was painfully obvious. Going it alone meant nothing.

So what was the answer?

I didn't know exactly. But this time, I decided to look after the people around me. And I chose Ger as my first project.

In a place where people lived more brutishly than actual barbarians, strength was power. A culture had formed here where if someone crushed you with force, you simply accepted it. Now that I'd beaten the same Ger who'd tormented me, the villagers wouldn't care what I did with him.

In the end, the reason I'd been ostracized was simple — I'd been far weaker than the other kids my age.

"I'll beat you soon enough anyway. Until then, you can mess with me all you want and I'll take it."

"Why ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠would I mess with you?"

I'd stepped on his head and asked how it felt, but he'd been unconscious for that part. He wouldn't remember.

I said it shamelessly.

"Let's just be friends."

"…Friends?"

"Yeah. We're about the same age."

Ger looked at me with open distaste.

"I don't want to be friends with someone like—"

"What?"

I raised a fist, and Ger had nothing more to say.

Just like that, we became friends.

Well. Should be fine, right?

In my past life, maybe not. But here, strength decided everything.

This backwater village was crawling with thugs.

Compared to them, Ger was almost a normal kid — just the neighborhood boss among the children. I decided Ger and I would clean them out one by one.

"Ah, but those older guys run in a pack. You should be careful."

"You're here, aren't you?"

"Why me? I don't even have a grudge against them."

"We're friends. You weren't seriously thinking I'd fight them alone, were you?"

"…"

My new friend was reassuring in his own way. We threw in together and agreed to take the thugs down one at a time. Ger would keep watch while I issued the challenge.

Our first target was the weakest-looking one in the bunch — weakest among the thugs, that is. He already had a body close to a grown man's, roughly Ger's size.

We waited until he was alone and blocked his path.

"The hell do you want?"

The thug eyed us with lazy irritation as we suddenly cut him off. I didn't bother answering. I just threw a punch.

And in the blink of an eye, a fist filled my vision, and I went down cold.

An adult's strength was on a completely different level from Ger's. A higher wall than anything I'd faced when I first fought him.

When I dropped in a single hit, Ger froze awkwardly where he stood. The thug's gaze shifted to him.

"Ah, I just got dragged along by this guy… Hyung, you know my face, right?"

As if a thug would care about that. Ger got beaten senseless and blacked out too.

We holed up in the mountains and began closed-door training. Ger sat with one eye swollen purple, lips pressed tight, his face full of pure injustice. Getting knocked out by a single punch from a thug must have sat very poorly with him.

"When you're frustrated, training is the best medicine."

"…We're fucked already. Those guys have marked us."

"You're going to fall apart over one loss? Is that all you amount to?"

"That's not what I—"

"Forget it. Put your fists up."

How long would it take this time to beat even the weakest of the thugs? There was no point agonizing over it already. Once you'd decided to win, you simply did it — until you actually won. The more ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠complicated your thoughts got, the more useless they became.

Not that I plan on becoming as stupid as these guys.

For six months we trained our bodies every single day, sparring against each other, trading fists. We needed to rebuild our foundation until ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠we could at least exchange a few exchanges and read an opponent.

"Ha. Something feels stuck."

"You feel it too?"

One day, mid-spar, Ger dropped to the ground and hung his head. Something felt stifling — a vague, formless frustration. I'd been feeling the same thing for months.

Ger spoke blankly.

"Is this a wall?"

"A wall? What's that?"

"My father told me something. Once your martial arts reach a certain level, you face a massive wall you can't even dream of climbing. To break through it easily, he said, you need to learn a proper, systematic martial art."

"And you think we've already hit that wall?"

"Couldn't it be?"

That seemed like an absurdly optimistic expectation. If it were true, why couldn't we even handle a single thug properly?

"Hmm. Maybe our bodies just can't keep up with our experience?"

"Experience?"

"We've been beating the hell out of each other every day for years."

"Yeah, but so has everyone else."

"True… Then maybe we're just that talented?"

One corner of my mouth twisted.

"If you start thinking that optimistically, you'll never improve again."

"And thinking we can beat the back-alley guys isn't optimistic?"

"Your sarcasm's gotten a lot better."

"I learned it all from you."

I looked at Ger and smiled meaningfully.

"Want me to teach you something worse?"

Ger waved his hands in a hurry.

"I'm good."

"No. You're not good."

In the end, we went back to the thugs without breaking through that wall. This time, two of them happened to be together. Ger and I each took one. We didn't last three exchanges.

"How do you learn a systematic martial art?"

"Obviously not around here. You have to catch a Warrior's eye and become his subordinate. There are no Warriors in this place."

So we had no choice but to walk that bleak road.

Another year passed. In that time we challenged the same opponents countless times and lost every one. By now they understood we were trying to climb over them, so every challenge meant getting beaten to the brink of death. One thug hammered my face so hard I ended up buried deep in a pile of rocks. When I came to, I had to dig myself out. It was a pretty miserable feeling.

Then one day, replaying a fight with a thug in my head, I suddenly grasped something.

It was abrupt. Why hadn't I thought of this before?

The way I usually threw a punch. The placement of my lead foot. How I set my center of gravity and shifted it. My breathing. The thoughts running through my head in those moments. Everything looked new.

If I just changed a little. Just a tiny, almost imperceptible amount. Change that much, and everything would be different — a whole new world would open up.

But the sensation was hazy. So how, exactly, was I supposed to change that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠little bit?

I threw myself into finding the answer. I forgot everything else and focused solely on that. Nothing around me registered. For days on end I stood in place, slowly extending my fist, turning over posture and breath in my mind.

And when I found it — a shiver ran through my entire body. A wild, intoxicating joy wrapped around me. The stifling wall that had filled my vision crumbled in an instant, and beyond it a new horizon seemed to unfold — clean, sharp, exhilarating.

Only then did the world around me come back into focus.

"You know you've been standing here for two weeks straight?"

That was what Ger said when I finally looked around. The hunger I'd forgotten crashed over me like a wave. Ger handed me food, as if he'd prepared it in advance.

"Did you break through the wall?"

"I think so."

"Lucky bastard."

"You'll get there soon. I guarantee it."

And sure enough, within a few months Ger shattered his wall too. In the meantime I tracked down the thug I'd lost to dozens of times and beat him senseless. The victory was so easy I couldn't understand how I'd struggled so hard before.

Word spread through the entire back alley in no time. Eventually they banded together and stormed the mountain where Ger and I always trained. And together with Ger — who had broken through his wall — we put every last one of them on the ground.

Ger shouted, pumped full of adrenaline.

"The back alley's ours now!"

I lightly smacked him across the back of the head.

And the back alley really did become ours.

The ones we'd beaten no longer dared to challenge us. Becoming their boss was the natural next step. The first thing I did was make them stop every thug habit they'd been practicing. Then I put them to work training.

I had no interest in ruling over them. Around that time, I was deep in thought about what martial arts even were. In this backward village, there was no one left worth challenging. So my interest naturally turned toward those people called Warriors.

But I didn't know where they were, or how to find them. I couldn't just wander off toward a vague goal. So I spent my time trying to systematically organize everything I'd learned in real combat. That, too, was a maddeningly elusive task — always just out of reach.

"Boss, we've still got two years until the coming-of-age ceremony."

Ever since we took over the back alley, Ger had insisted on calling me Boss. I'd told him not to, but he seemed to enjoy it, so I let it go.

The coming-of-age ceremony he mentioned wasn't much. Kids who came of age in the same year gathered and competed over who could hunt the most beasts. The adults drank and placed bets on the results. It wasn't particularly interesting to me.

I said to Ger,

"I want to become a Warrior. Is there any way?"

"…Well, other than going and finding them yourself, probably not. They're not going to come here."

It was time to leave the village. That thought settled in me. But the village rules stood in the way.

"You can't leave the village without completing the coming-of-age ceremony."

"I know. Doesn't matter. We'll do it this year."

"Really?"

You could take the ceremony even if you weren't old enough. It was rare, but a few people had tried it before. There was no reason we couldn't.

A few months later, Ger and I went through the coming-of-age ceremony. After the rumor that I'd taken over the back alley, I'd vanished from sight, so the villagers had written it off as nonsense. When I showed up for the ceremony, they stared at me in blank confusion.

I set out with eight other kids, crossing the mountains that ringed the village to hunt beasts. Those mountains were as familiar to me as my own hands. Wherever my feet carried me, I found game. I caught so many that hauling them back became the real problem.

When I finally returned to the village, I was dragging thirty animal carcasses behind me on ropes. Every eye in the village locked onto me — bewilderment, shock, and faces that simply couldn't believe it.

It was the highest record in the history of the ceremony. And I'd done it two years before I was even supposed to come of age. None of the kids who arrived after me had taken thirty. There wasn't a dismissive look left among them.

The goal I'd set when I first made up my mind — I'd achieved it. But it didn't move me much. My perspective had been shifting, little by little, all along. Somewhere along the way, my goal had become leaving this village and becoming a Warrior.

The day after the ceremony, Ger and I left the village without delay.

"If we go to another village, they say people can tell right away we're from here and look down on us. Something about smelling like cheap stone. So, uh… maybe we should roll around in the forest a bit first?"

Ger seemed to be seriously considering it.

"No need. Those looks will change soon enough."

"…Well, if you say so."

Ger nodded without a shred of doubt. The ease of that trust made me laugh quietly to myself.