A Pebble-Flick of Proof
Choi Seoyeon TV
Before I fell into Moorim, I had been, by all accounts, an ordinary high school student.
Which meant that my memories with Seoyeon consisted mostly of the two of us watching TV together.
And back then, the cartoon she loved most of all was Doraemon.
"Uncle, I want one of those too. Make me a bamboo-copter."
"Even your uncle can't make that."
"Aw, liar. You said you can do anything."
"That was your mom telling lies."
"Is not. My mom never lies. And she said you really, truly can do anything."
I smiled, reminiscing about that long-ago conversation with Seoyeon.
By my reckoning it had been decades, yet the memories of those days were strangely vivid. Even now I could recall the color of the floorboards in that room, the whir of the fan, the exact temperature of the air. And just as clearly, the image of my adorable niece chattering away at me with such confidence.
And that kid grew up to become... this.
I wiped the smile from my lips and studied my niece with a distinctly sour expression.
"Oh, hello, everyone! It's been a while. Hello, uncles-aunties-oppas! Guro? Yes. I'm fine. There aren't many people around the gate, so it's way better than when the Blood Sect guild was around."
She was chattering animatedly at thin air.
Of course, I knew she hadn't lost her mind. Personal broadcasts had been everywhere even right before I fell into Moorim, and Seoyeon had explained to me beforehand that she'd be streaming today.
Besides, science had advanced in the ten years I was gone — I could well accept that the round, spherical machine floating in midair was the broadcasting equipment now, not a camera.
"Hm? No way. Makeup? I'm only eighteen, you know."
The problem was her attitude while streaming.
There was not a trace of the girl who, minutes ago, had looked me dead in the eye and said, "Uncle, do you have any idea how much this pays?"
It was admirable, in a way — her desperate attempt to earn money for her little brother. But frankly, it felt dangerously close to fraud.
It was just far, far too different from Seojun, who had only waved us off with a belly-deep "have a nice trip."
Like mother, like daughter, I suppose.
Because in that moment, watching Seoyeon, I was also seeing my older sister, Lee Minhee.
Hey, brother-in-law. You know... I actually already knew, right?
The image surfaced of the day my brother-in-law, having glimpsed my sister's true nature, had turned to me with that question.
Looking at him, slumped and wilted like a rain-soaked puppy, I had been unable to say anything other than a lame apology.
Lost in the past, I found myself gazing at Seoyeon with a complicated expression.
The truly alarming thing was that both Lee Minhee and Seoyeon were pretty enough that any stranger would be neatly taken in by their sweet facades.
"Ah, everyone, there's someone I want to introduce. Ta-da!"
That was the moment Seoyeon pounced on me.
I had been glaring at her sourly when letters suddenly floated up before her.
Not many messages were scrolling up the chat window.
Whether that was fortunate or unfortunate, it seemed the channel wasn't all that famous.
But Seoyeon paid her viewer count no mind and barreled on.
"Boyfriend? As if! It's my uncle. We just found him recently."
Reading the messages, I made a strange face.
First off, that Robang character looked a bit unhinged. StarryNight, though — passed the interview.
And Let'sEatBeef seemed to have a decent eye for people.
"Handsome? Please. Anyway, today I'm clearing a gate with my uncle. Oh, and ta-da — he gave me a weapon too! Isn't it pretty?"
Seoyeon drew out the Jeok-a I'd given her and held it up to the camera, carrying on with her stream.
I flinched for a moment, but it shouldn't matter. In Moorim plenty of people would covet the Jeok-a, but here nobody would know what it was.
"Thank you for the donation, StarryNight!"
Seoyeon bowed to the empty air, then jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow.
Was one really supposed to bow for a mere million won? But catching the fierce glint in her eye, I nodded along.
"Huh? I don't think my uncle's rich, though? Oh — it's our turn. Anyway, the gate raid officially starts now!"
Having answered every message in the chat, Seoyeon grabbed my arm and marched toward the gate.
Naturally, she hadn't deigned to reply to that Robang fellow, so I trailed after her with a satisfied expression.
Well, actually, come to think of it, StarryNight didn't entirely sit right with me either.
Being the Blood Sect's leader had mildly warped my sense of money, but I found myself wondering whether a million won was really the kind of sum one tossed out so casually just for watching a stream.
StarryNight. Robang. Noted for later.
The moment we passed through the gate, the scenery changed in an instant.
The buildings nearby vanished, replaced by thick, towering trees pressing in on every side. A secret realm had a similar feel, but the gate carried a distinctly artificial quality that set it apart.
"This is the gate. From now on, absolutely do not let your guard down. Monsters could pop out from anywhere."
I nodded at Seoyeon, who was speaking to me with a remarkably serious face.
In truth, I was already tracking every living thing within ten jang of us, but there was no need to snuff out my niece's enthusiasm.
"Oh, there's one."
That was the moment a small, ugly, green-skinned monster leapt out of the underbrush.
"Kreek!"
The creature had been sniffing around when it spotted Seoyeon and me, and immediately began screeching and posturing at us.
Obviously, I knew what it was — a goblin.
I'd played my fair share of games back when I was Seoyeon's age, after all.
"I've got this one."
That was the moment Seoyeon moved.
The cutesy streamer act vanished, and her eyes hardened into something closer to a warrior's. Drawing the Jeok-a, she charged straight at the goblin.
"Wha—?"
And then a strange cry of surprise burst from her own lips.
Having cleaved through the goblin's neck without a flicker of hesitation, she stood there blinking down at her own hands and feet in confusion.
"...Did I get better?"
I let out a quiet chuckle as she muttered to herself.
Skill wasn't the kind of thing that grew overnight, after all.
The reason for Seoyeon's astonishing growth was simple. First, I had untangled the meridians of hers that had been pierced through haphazardly on our first day together. Second, the Jeok-a itself had been subtly correcting her movements.
"See that, Uncle? That's how you do it."
Seoyeon said it even while staring at me in bewilderment.
Unless she was a fool, she had to know the change in her body came from me — but right then, apparently, she'd wanted to show off that she was good at something.
I had a fair guess as to why she was so suddenly eager for approval.
Out in the chat window floating ahead of her, messages of astonishment at her movements were scrolling up one after another.
Still not enough.
But to my eyes, it fell far short.
Her footwork was inefficient from the start, and even her timing in closing the distance was late. The sword's trajectory alone was passable, thanks to the Jeok-a — but no matter how great a treasure of Moorim it was, the blade couldn't fix a strike that was wrong from the moment it began.
"That was one of those skills Awakened people use, right?"
"...Huh? Oh. Yeah."
Startled by my question, Seoyeon answered with a dazed expression.
She looked like she wanted to ask how I knew, but for me — someone who could read the jin qi flowing through her body — picking that much out was no difficult feat. The jin qi that had lain quiet inside her all this time had stirred for the very first time just now.
So that's how her meridians got punctured like that.
It was true, as Seoyeon kept saying, that I knew far too little about Awakened or gates.
Only after watching her use a "skill" with my own eyes did I grasp, roughly, how Awakened drew on their abilities.
And my first impression was something close to disappointment.
The movement Seoyeon had just shown was sharp enough — but that was all it was.
Like taking a single technique out of a martial art and using it on its own.
That was all the Awakened's so-called skills looked like to me.
Martial arts were, by their nature, a continuous chain of forms, all bound into a single flowing current. There was a reason one form flowed into the next, and each subsequent form existed to complete and reinforce the one before it. So plucking one out and using it in isolation struck me as hopelessly inefficient.
"You're using a skill to kill one measly goblin? Just take it down with your own skill. And why are your shoulders so tense? You could move faster, but you're slowing yourself down."
I said this to Seoyeon directly.
Maybe it was the unsolicited lecture, but she stared at me, flustered, and thrust out her lip in a pout.
"If you're so good, then you show me, Uncle!"
Choi Seoyeon gritted her teeth as she read the messages floating before her eyes.
She'd honestly believed she'd put on a pretty decent showing for her uncle.
The Jeok-a was a sword her uncle had given her, sure — but never in her life had she felt a blade slice through something so smoothly. And so, frankly, she'd been hoping for at least a little praise.
Ever since Dad had disappeared too, she could count on one hand the times anyone had complimented her.
"You're using a skill to kill one measly goblin? Just take it down with your own skill. And why are your shoulders so tense? You could move faster, but you're slowing yourself down."
But all that came back from her uncle was pure criticism.
Maybe she did look lacking by his standards, but still — wasn't that going too far?
Which was why it happened.
"If you're so good, then you show me, Uncle!"
That was Choi Seoyeon, letting loose at her uncle with a voice thick with wounded pride.
But her uncle, wearing the face of a man who saw nothing he couldn't do, simply bent down and picked up a pebble no bigger than a fingernail.
"...What are you going to do with that?"
Seoyeon ignored the messages hovering in front of her and stared at her uncle.
That was the moment he lightly flicked the pebble off his palm.
No — "flick" described it better than "threw." His arm had barely hung loose at his side; all he'd done was push the pebble away with his thumb, the way one might launch a coin.
"Kreek—!"
That was the moment a goblin in the distance screamed and toppled backward.
Choi Seoyeon turned to look at her uncle, eyes wide with shock.
And her uncle, meeting her gaze, curled the corner of his mouth upward and said:
"Impressed?"
No, not impressed. Absolutely not.
"Okay, no matter how you slice it, this is just cheating!"
Choi Seoyeon had no choice but to shout it at him, the very picture of injustice.