Zhuge Yang (3)
A maid — no, a servant. Whatever the title, I had somehow succeeded in attaching myself to Zhuge Yang's side. My next goal was to spend the days until Liu Bei came to recruit her on study and martial training.
Honestly, though I was employed under the name of servant, I was fairly idle. My duties amounted to hauling wood down from the hills of Longzhong, splitting it into firewood, and cleaning the little house, and none of it took very long.
I suppose I should explain about the laundry and the cooking, too.
The escort called Yeon was named Yeon Hwa. Right now she was cooking beside me while I fed the stove, glaring at me every so often.
"Whew... I honestly can't imagine why the Young Miss picked you..."
"I'm sorry..."
She seemed under a fair amount of stress. If they'd hired a maid who could actually cook, the cooking would have been delegated, and a lady of the house certainly had no business washing the women's clothes with her own two hands. But there stood Yeon Hwa — a woman whose martial arts had been honed to the point where she could hold down escort work despite being a woman — stuck doing menial chores. The trouble began on day one.
"I'm twelve too, you know. Let's speak comfortably!"
"Even so, I came here as a servant...?"
"That's fine! Let's be friends, friend!"
When she shoved her face right up to mine and blinked those big, bright eyes at me, how was I supposed to refuse her anything?!
Under Zhuge Yang's relentless campaign, we ended up dropping the formalities after all. Who knew — the position of Zhuge Yang's childhood friend might not be so bad?
"Won! You said you could cook, right? Then dinner's on you!"
"You bet! Leave it to me!"
With her eyes brimming over with expectation as she asked me for dinner, I wanted to rise to the occasion, so I declared my confidence with plenty of bravado and marched into the kitchen. I'd been through military service and cooked rice in a pot before — simple rice should be nothing.
"Ah."
An enormous, soot-black iron cauldron greeted me. A crisis had come calling on the very first day of my transmigration — and the very first day of my employment.
Zhuge Yang narrowed her eyes in fierce concentration and poked her spoon around the inside of her bowl, this way and that. A stubborn will showed in her face, as though she would not rest until she unearthed something.
How long did she scrape at that bowl? The corners of her stubbornly pursed, adorable lips slowly began to curl upward.
"Wow! This part's at least brown. It might actually be edible!"
Beaming, she held up a pitch-black lump of what she called black scorched rice, faintly browned on one side. Black scorched rice was a generous bit of packaging — it was simply burnt rice. My first attempt at cooking rice in a cauldron had ended in catastrophic failure.
"Young Miss! You mustn't eat burnt food. Allow me to make a fresh pot."
In the end Yeon Hwa stepped in, and I, reading the room, scrambled to my feet right after her.
"I-I'll try again..."
"This time, watch closely and learn."
"Yes, ma'am..."
Shrinking beneath Yeon Hwa's frosty stare, I began learning how to cook rice in a cauldron all over again. She washed the rice with practiced hands and poured in just the right amount of water — far, far more than I had.
"Ah... I put in far too little water, didn't I."
"... Do not make the same mistake tomorrow."
"Yes, Escort Yeon!"
I answered with all the bravado I could muster, and the next day, the rice came out a success.
"Wow! You've gotten so good, Won! Amazing! This rice is exactly how I like it!"
Zhuge Yang's storm of praise left me with nowhere to put myself. I pressed my palms together respectfully and apologized on the spot.
"S-sorry."
Yeon Hwa, who had been poking at her seasoned greens, set down her chopsticks and spoke.
"... Come with me."
And so I learned how to make side dishes from Yeon Hwa. Of everything I had just served, only the rice had turned out right; the rest was a complete disaster — some dishes too salty, some badly under-seasoned, some tough as leather. Today, once again, Yeon Hwa had put me through cooking drills.
While Yeon Hwa shot me a sidelong glare and headed off to a nearby stream with the baskets of Zhuge Yang's laundry and her own, Zhuge Yang came sidling over to me.
"Won! What is it you're doing right now?"
She had taken an interest in the movements I was running through.
"Ah, this? It's just... something like a martial art. You've probably never seen it before."
"Ahahahaha! It's a little weird! Did you make it up yourself?"
"Ah, no... I mean, yeah. Just something I've been trying out."
I had opened my mouth to deny it, then remembered that as far as this world was concerned, I had only just come to my senses. Since I couldn't very well claim I'd learned it years ago, I had officially become the founder of kickboxing.
"It's fascinating. Hmm, I thought it looked strange at first, but watching it again, it seems useful. For something you invented all on your own, it's honestly impressive!"
"R-really?"
She called it impressive, sure — but of course, scholar that she was, even Zhuge Yang would find it hard to grasp just how formidable kickboxing truly was. And yet the moment I saw her eyes sparkling bright, strength inexplicably flooded into my shoulders, and kiais came bursting out of me unbidden.
"Ha! Yah! Cha!"
I was quite fond of this body of mine. The old burns and the bald patches were a shame, but my lower half was mine to command again. Honestly, young as it was, this body seemed far more flexible and resilient than the one I'd had back in the real world. Could it be that I was destined to become a great warrior? Zhuge Yang's childhood friend and bodyguard, that is.
I kept drilling my kickboxing forms, sneaking the occasional glance to the side. Zhuge Yang sat crouched nearby, chin propped in her hands, smiling contentedly.
Why was she so good to me? Was she simply kind by nature? Come to think of it, she always had been. Even when I burnt the rice — whether to spare my feelings or not — she would dig out whatever edible part she could find and smile for me; even when I ruined the side dishes, she would only praise how well I'd cooked the rice, exactly as I'd been taught. And now here she was, trailing at my heels like a duckling, showering me with praise all over again.
I truly couldn't understand why she treated me so well. My face was a wreck, and I couldn't even cook properly.
'Hmm. He's not bad at all, actually.'
Zhuge Yang watched Ma Won as he earnestly drilled an art she had never seen before, kiais ringing out with every movement. Legs hard as steel and sharp, precise fists shot forward with force, cleaving the air. The unfamiliar movements had struck her as odd at first, but on a second look, it was a surprisingly practical martial art.
To her eye — a direct descendant of the Zhuge Clan, one of the Five Great Clans of the murim — these were third-rate techniques utterly devoid of flourish, yet a certain battlefield practicality shone through them. Unexpectedly, the boy showed a talent for the martial arts.
She went on watching him. The feeling that had been welling up these past few days as she observed Ma Won was...
'Poor child.'
The patchy, thinning hair and the skin warped by burns made her heart ache for him. Good heavens — parents who would burn their own child alive... Having projected herself onto him, Zhuge Yang always met Ma Won with a smile and a compliment, unable to bear the sight of him losing heart. Even she knew a few of those smiles and praises had been forced — but she wanted, somehow, to shore up his spirits.
As she dwelt on Ma Won's pitiful lot, Zhuge Yang suddenly found herself remembering two months prior — the day she had walked out of her family's gates.
"Father, Mother... I... am going to leave the clan."
When she — all of twelve years old — declared she was leaving home, her parents hesitated only briefly before granting their permission. After all, they had hardly the face to refuse.
"... If that is your will, then so be it."
"Then I shall take my leave..."
After the young girl finished her farewells and was packing her belongings, fighting back a flood of tears, Yeon Hwa came to her.
"Sister Hwa... I was going to come say goodbye anyway..."
"I am going with you."
"You're following me? ... Is it my mother's order?"
"No, Young Miss. I have resigned my post as escort. It was I who asked to follow you."
"... Do you pity me?"
Yeon Hwa answered without a word, simply gathering her into a tight embrace. In a warmth she had never once felt from her own family, Zhuge Yang finally broke down and wept.
Yeon Hwa was an escort warrior her mother Seo Ran — a daughter of the Seo Clan — had brought with her into the Zhuge household. Yeon Hwa had doted on Zhuge Yang alone since her earliest days, and now she had abandoned a clan that guaranteed her a bright future in order to follow her young miss instead.
"Shall we go, then?"
On the road out of the estate, Zhuge Yang ran headlong into the last person she wanted to see — her elder sister, Zhuge Lin. Unlike Zhuge Yang's, her eyes were sharp and cutting. Zhuge Yang gave her answer to Zhuge Lin, whose temples bulged every bit as much as Yeon Hwa's.
"... I'm going."
Zhuge Lin answered with a sneer.
"Farewell. Not that we'll ever cross paths again."
Cruel to the very last. With that thought, Zhuge Yang bade the clan a final farewell. With its gates at her back, she set out for Longzhong together with Yeon Hwa.
"Is there nowhere you wish to go, Young Miss?"
"Mm. I like this village."
Quickening their pace together, they reached a small house at the foot of Longzhong, a stream running past its front, and there Zhuge Yang unpacked her belongings. She had prepared the place from the moment she first resolved to leave. No doubt the clan knew of it as well — she couldn't have cared less. A life away from the suffocating clan, spent in the company of someone who truly cared for her: young Zhuge Yang thought that might not be so bad at all.
"Backed by the mountain, facing the water. A most auspicious site, Young Miss."
"You've studied geomancy?"
"A little."
"They say it makes a fine gravesite, too."
At the words dropped so carelessly from her mouth, Yeon Hwa went rigid. Slowly, as if her neck were rusted through, she turned her head to stare at Zhuge Yang. Deliberately avoiding her gaze, Zhuge Yang went on.
"Thank you for coming with me. Later... bury me beside this house. I love this village, you see."
Yeon Hwa's lips quivered. At last, she managed a reply.
"... Yes, Young Miss..."
There would be nothing else she could do. Before a death she could see coming, all Yeon Hwa would be able to do was lay Zhuge Yang to rest in the gravesite her young miss had already picked out.
"Oh — and if you'd rather leave before then, feel free. The whole area's good land, after all."
"I-I would never...!"
"... Sorry."
That first day after leaving the clan, her emotions had somehow burst their banks, and Zhuge Yang regretted almost instantly the terrible things she had said to Yeon Hwa to bury her own grief. After that first day in her new home, she threw herself into being far livelier than she had ever been inside the clan — if only for the sake of the heartbroken Yeon Hwa. No. She pretended to be.
"Escort Yeon, perhaps we should hire a maid?"
"... There is no need, Young Miss."
Yeon Hwa insisted she was fine, but for a first-rate martial artist to single-handedly handle the laundry, the cleaning, the cooking, and the gathering of firewood was a dreadful waste. In the end, Zhuge Yang resolved to hire a maid — and somehow, in place of a maid, she came away with a rather hapless servant boy instead.
That was her first meeting with Ma Won — the boy who would one day redraw the very map of the murim.