Zhuge Yang (7)
With this... I can save Zhuge Yang!
With that thought, I carefully lifted the root from the earth. For all its thick body, it had hardly any fine rootlets to speak of, and I began brushing the soil from its form, so closely resembling the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng. The flesh slowly coming into view was a shade of silver-white.
My hands, cradling the snow ginseng with such care, were trembling uncontrollably.
Silver-white? It's silver-white!
A brilliant hue, unmistakably different from the grayish-white of a Hundred-Year Snow Ginseng.
Her face rose in my mind once more. In my imagination, she looked exactly as she had when I last saw her a year ago, without a hair's breadth of difference. She burst into her bright, cheerful laughter and waved at me.
"Ahahahaha! Won! You've been through so much! You can come back now! Come and see me!"
Forcing the phantom of Zhuge Yang's welcome out of my head, I began, with trembling hands, to carefully brush away the last of the soil—as if, once the dirt was gone, that silver-white root might turn a pure and perfect white.
My careful fingers wiped the soil away completely, but the color never changed.
In the end, this was nothing more than a Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng.
"Aaaaahhh......"
Along with the hollowness, something hot came surging up from deep in my chest. In the end, I couldn't hold it back, and it burst out of me.
"FUUUUCK!!!"
It was the first curse I had spat since falling into this world of murim. A single Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng—a root that even a child who had spent barely a year playing at being a mountain ascetic had managed to find—so why in the world could that mighty Zhuge Clan not get their hands on one? How could one miserable scrap of a plant drive that girl to despair and make her give up on living?
I resented the heavens. When I looked up, ready to hurl curses at the sky, it was blanketed in dark clouds, as though it had never once poured down warm sunlight. Before long, a thin drizzle began to fall.
I wondered if the Mountain God, having so graciously granted me a Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng, had taken offense at all my swearing.
... Fine. Do as you please.
A short while later, I sat slumped in a rain that had swollen into a downpour, thinking exactly that.
After discovering the Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng—a legendary elixir of the ages that no one in the murim would fail to covet—I combed Mount Heng from top to bottom all over again. But whether the Mountain God truly had been angered, not the slightest trace of that feeling ever came to me.
Precious time slipped away, and there was nothing I could do to hold it back.
And then... I had to make my decision.
There was truly no time left. If I wanted even one last glimpse of her face... I had to go back now.
Clutching this worthless scrap of a plant, useless for saving her life.
"Sister Hwa! This flower is so pretty, isn't it?"
Zhuge Yang's condition had improved for a brief stretch, and Yeon Hwa, out on a walk with her during that small reprieve, watched the girl's back with aching eyes as she crouched in front of a purple flower.
"... It is pretty."
"You know those books you bought me a while back, Sister? One of them was all about flowers, and it says the language of purple flowers stands for parting, death, and sorrow. Why would a flower this pretty get a meaning like that?"
Yeon Hwa's breath kept catching in her throat. Zhuge Yang looked genuinely curious—but how could anyone possibly talk about death to her face?
"Aaah! I miss Wooooon! He didn't even come for my birthday last year. When he gets back, I'm going to scold him until he bawls his eyes out. Don't you dare try to stop me either! Got it?"
Having said it all with a beaming smile, Zhuge Yang moved on to yet another flower and kept up her bright chatter.
Could this be the last flare of a dying lamp? Watching Zhuge Yang—whose fifteenth birthday was tomorrow—running about with such radiance made Yeon Hwa's eyes sting red in spite of herself. She turned slightly away and quietly wiped her tears.
Lately, Zhuge Yang's days had grown terribly short. She was surely living the same twelve sijin—the full twenty-four hours—as everyone else, so why did each day feel so fleeting?
And the shorter the days felt, the more relentlessly she moved. She gazed at pretty flowers and fired every question that came to her straight at Yeon Hwa, without letting a single one pass through her brain first. She simply wanted to.
Because... her days were far, far too short.
The culprit stealing those days—the excruciating pain—arrived without warning, just as it always did.
"Aaagh! Ha...!"
Zhuge Yang's body lurched as though seized by convulsions and crumpled to the ground. A frigid cold coiled around her entire body, as if an awl of ice driven deep into her bones were carving its way straight through her. Her face had already gone pale and bloodless, and her trembling fingertips scraped at the floor as she forced herself to swallow the screams she dared not voice.
"Young Miss! No!!"
Yeon Hwa's voice reached her as though it were a phantom sound, distant and unreal.
"Ha... haa...!"
The breath slipping between Zhuge Yang's lips tore and frayed like ripped hemp cloth. The scream fighting to erupt from her throat was crushed down until her breath nearly stopped, and in its place tears poured from her eyes as if spilled from a pitcher.
Writhing in agony, unable even to draw a proper breath, Zhuge Yang had the strange sensation of her body being gathered into someone's arms and carried. Then every meridian in her body twisted anew, and pain like her heart and lungs being wrung at the same instant crashed over her. She screwed her eyes shut and forced down the scream that threatened to burst free.
By the time she managed to pry open her tightly shut eyes, dawn was breaking. Even as she thrashed in torment, Zhuge Yang found it absurdly funny.
So today's my fifteenth birthday, huh. They all said I'd die before it ever came. What a pure, utter lie.
The first face that surfaced in that moment was Yeon Hwa's. How will my loyal Yeon Hwa live on, after burying me?
The next was the maid who had trembled in terror amid the flames. If I had handled things a little more decisively back then, could she have been spared those burns?
And then my friend Ma Won. He swore he'd save me, no matter what. Even if he comes back empty-handed, I'll forgive him—so he'd better come home in one piece and show me his face at least once.
The symptoms, which had seemed to ease for a moment, worsened again. Cruel pain rolled in without end, as if iron hammers were shattering her bones from every direction at once.
She clutched at her own body, straining to endure the agony reverberating from deep within her bones. But the harder she fought, the more her breath was smothered, until a terror like flailing beneath deep water crashed over her consciousness.
"Ugh... uuaah..."
Even that faint moan slipping out was a desperate effort to smother her own screams. Her entire body quivered violently, and the fear rushed in that she might truly tear apart. She knew she could endure no more, and despair engulfed her—the end was close now.
From tear ducts long since dried up, one final tear welled. The droplet slid slowly down her face and fell, as though draining out the last of her remaining life.
The savage cold began slowly devouring her consciousness.
So this is... really the end...
Every sensation in her body went numb, and at last even her heart seemed to be slowing toward stillness. Her final breath froze in her throat; she no longer had the strength to speak. Just before the last tear tracing her eye could fall, she tried, within her all-but-vanished consciousness, to accept her fate.
And in that instant, she felt warmth—coming from somewhere, from someone. Faint though it was, it seeped into her frozen body like a single thread of light.
Like one drop of water falling into a vast pond, warmth began to spread through her cold and hollow heart. Small and frail as it was, that warmth unmistakably permeated the cold within her, little by little, and began to push it back.
This is... what is...?
In that moment, her heart beat once more—faint, but real. That single drop of warmth wandered slowly through her body, as though melting her frozen meridians one by one.
With the last of her strength she tried to open her eyes, but even that was beyond her. Yet the warmth sank deeper and deeper, and with it came the feeling that her life force was being kindled anew. A faint hope—that it was not all over yet—began to wrap itself around her.
As the warm energy spread gradually through her body, Zhuge Yang felt her life slowly returning. The warmth, so faint at first, now spread into every corner of her, pushing back the cold and the pain bit by bit. As her heart began to beat again, each breath came a little easier than the last.
She felt something being pressed gently into her mouth. It was not cold, but something warm and soft, and instinctively she swallowed it down, gulp after gulp. As the energy of life seeped into her body, the pain slowly ebbed away.
She had no idea how much time had passed; she only knew that her body was mending, little by little. As her strength returned, she struggled to open her eyes. Her eyelids trembled slowly, and the world reappeared before her, blurred and dim.
Ma Won...?
As her bleary vision cleared, she found Ma Won gazing down at her from mere inches away. His face was full of worry and urgency, and yet at the same time he was busily intent on something. Zhuge Yang realized he was feeding her—Ma Won was chewing something white into fine pieces and carefully easing them into her mouth.
The moment she grasped what was happening, Zhuge Yang felt her face flood scarlet. Because the pain had left her unable to swallow on her own, Ma Won was chewing the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng himself and feeding it to her, mouth to mouth.
After feeding her the very last fragment of the ginseng, he paused to catch his breath, his eyes resting on her. Only then did Zhuge Yang close her eyes and try to take in what had happened. His breath, thick with urgency, brushed across her face—and only then did it truly sink in that she was coming back to life.
When she met his eyes, still lost in confusion, Ma Won could hold back no longer.
"Your body! Is your body okay?!"
Tracing the sensation of the ginseng sliding down her throat, she found herself remembering that instant when Ma Won's lips had brushed against her own.
Her head understood it was nothing more than an act to save her life, but her heart refused to accept anything so simple. Like a tiny spark leaping to life, an inexplicable flutter rippled through her chest.
This feeling... what is it...?
What she had felt for Ma Won at first was pity. Seeing a boy abandoned by his parents just as she had been, and burned and scarred on top of it, her heart had ached for him.
As time passed, he had changed from someone she simply protected into her one true friend.
But when Ma Won had chewed the ginseng and fed it to her with his own mouth, a flutter had blossomed from somewhere deep within Zhuge Yang. She was confused—but Ma Won no longer felt like merely a friend.
She could not yet name what this feeling was, but she could no longer deny the warm something that stirred in her chest whenever she thought of him.