A Genius Who Hated Martial Arts
Hot tears spilled from the corners of Ha Seo-hwa’s eyes.
Though her voice was heavy with tears, she poured out her resentment without pause.
“I still see it every time I close my eyes—my parents dying, cut down by a sword. I’ve been cutting back on sleep every night and training because I never wanted to lose anyone again. And yet you, with barely half a year of training, can laugh at everything I’ve worked for all this time... Then what am I supposed to believe in now? What am I supposed to hold a sword for?!”
In my previous life, Ha Seo-hwa had answered that question for herself.
I regretted it a little.
If I had spent more time with her, I might have been able to deal with her inner demons much more easily.
“If not for that, then what about chivalry?”
“Heroes are always too late!”
She propped herself up and shot back at me.
“Always too late—my parents died because of that. Our home burned down too. What good is it to come after everything’s already gone and there’s no one left to protect?!”
“Even if a hero arrives late, it still helps in the long run.”
That’s what heroes do: they prevent things after the fact.
By punishing the evil sects and scoundrels who committed the crime, you can reduce the number of victims that come after.
“Besides, people who do vile things always end up fearing heroes in the end.”
“Too late. It’s always too late!”
That was true.
In the end, heroes were always late.
I couldn’t deny that.
Middle Kingdom was vast, and the number of people living in it was enormous.
Among them, those called heroes were only a tiny handful.
“You know that, too.”
“...”
“You know the helplessness of watching your family die and being unable to do anything—just like I do...”
Ha Seo-hwa pleaded through her tears, seeking my agreement.
The circumstances were different, but both of us had lost our parents and families to martial artists and been the only ones to survive.
Maybe that was why she wanted to share her sorrow with me.
“You’re strong. You’re gaining the power to endure it. But what about someone weaker than you?”
Ha Seo-hwa asked desperately.
Clutching at my trouser leg as if she were clinging to me, she demanded an answer.
“I picked up a sword because I didn’t want to lose anyone else. I trained in martial arts so I wouldn’t be too late, and then I get humiliatingly defeated by you, who only entered the sect half a year ago. Then I—”
“What are you supposed to do, you mean?”
“...”
“You’re not really angry at me right now, Senior Sister. You just wanted to prove your own effort to yourself by beating me.”
The strength suddenly drained from the hand gripping my pants.
“It’s frightening when all the effort you’ve built up collapses in an instant, isn’t it? I know. I understand that feeling.”
“...”
“You had those same doubts even before you knew me. You must have wondered whether training like this would really be enough to overcome the day when your fears finally came.”
Ha Seo-hwa had been doubting the value of her own effort.
I understood that feeling all too well.
I had been the same.
“It’s just that I suddenly showed up and beat you, so all those doubts burst out as emotion.”
It was the same with her interest in me from the very beginning.
“You noticed me because I passed the entrance test in awful weather. I was already strong even before I learned martial arts. So back then, you were looking for me.”
Everyone around her called her a genius, but she herself had never thought of herself that way.
“You wanted to see a real genius. And you wanted to prove your own effort by defeating one. If you lost, you probably thought it’d still be fine, because then you could ask how I got so strong.”
But she lost.
She was defeated in a single exchange.
Even after that, she challenged me again, but before we could exchange more than a few moves, she was sprawled helplessly on the ground.
And she never even got the secret to strength.
Because there was no such secret in this world.
“But you were the same, Senior Sister. In just a year, you beat everyone in Hwa-yeon Hall and started training alone.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“That you and I aren’t so different.”
Besides, I was younger than Ha Seo-hwa.
However mature I might have been on the inside, hadn’t she chosen the wrong person to knock down and prove herself against?
“What am I supposed to pick up a sword for, you ask? I’m just a disciple who entered the sect not long ago. I’ve barely learned anything properly—how am I supposed to answer that?”
“...”
“Still, there’s one thing I agree with you on. Chivalry? Let’s just toss that into the dog’s bowl.”
Even so, I agreed with her words, with a touch of sarcasm.
“All that matters to me is that Mount Hua, the sect that took me in when I was dying, stays in one piece. What do I care about some commoner? If you help them and they repay your kindness with betrayal, then tell them not to expect help in the first place and let them die. It’s not worth saving them.”
Ha Seo-hwa looked up at me.
Her face was still streaked with tears, and even through her shock, it was clear she had never expected to hear such words from me.
“But there was someone who once told me that saving people doesn’t always need a reason.”
Just before I was swallowed by fire.
The one who spoke to me had been like a wet cloth laid across my burning forehead, cooling me enough to keep going.
“Heroes are late. I think Senior Sister is right about that too. Since they’re late, I don’t think there’s anything strange about drawing a sword so you can protect yourself. But Elder Jin took you in and made you her grand-disciple, didn’t she? Even though you had no connection at all.”
Because there was chivalry, there was the Ha Seo-hwa of now.
And there was the me of now.
“So when I leave for the jianghu later, I’ll go around doing acts of justice.”
“...”
“Saving people, harming people—aren’t acts of chivalry and evil ultimately things you can only judge if you have the strength to do them? That’s why you train. If you keep practicing justice and righteousness yourself, you’ll eventually find the answer.”
Whether the result was right or wrong, in the end, some conclusion would be reached one way or another.
The fierce energy Ha Seo-hwa had shown before was gone.
She just sat there, shoulders slack, collapsed in place.
“Tch. What am I even saying to a ten-year-old?” I muttered.
Apparently hearing me, Ha Seo-hwa answered in a choked voice.
“You’re... a kid too.”
“Then what are you asking a kid younger than yourself for? Ask an elder or your master instead.”
Ha Seo-hwa sniffled.
How was I supposed to comfort a crying child again?
I’d lived a life with no real connection to children, so I was completely in the dark on this front.
As I stood there hesitating over whether I should leave Ha Seo-hwa where she was, the only thing that came to mind was my master.
No more scolding.
I placed a hand on the top of Ha Seo-hwa’s head and rubbed it roughly.
“Anyway... Master’s probably waiting, having already set out dinner. Pull yourself together before the food gets cold and come back. We still have to go to the Library after supper.”
Comforting a crying child is harder than it looks.
Maybe because Master often patted my head, this was the only thing I could think to do.
Sure enough, beneath my hand, busy rubbing through her hair, came the faint sound of a young girl crying.
Honestly, I hadn’t expected her to cry at all. Startled, I snatched my hand back. The face that had been hidden beneath my hand was now visible.
She’s a mess.
Why was Ha Seo-hwa crying even harder instead of calming down?
Maybe because she’d suddenly thought of her dead parents.
Maybe because she’d realized all her efforts had been for nothing.
Or maybe because the things she had believed in until now had been denied, leaving her drowning in grief.
So Ha Seo-hwa hated martial arts.
It was the first time I’d realized it.
She loathed martial arts at its core, because it had shattered her life.
And yet, paradoxically, she had trained ruthlessly—so that she would never lose anything precious again, and so that she could prove her own worth within the sect.
She’d clung to the vague belief that if she trained in martial arts, she would be able to take hold of the reins of that power herself.
I had just destroyed that belief.
A child who thought martial arts were cruel, and so chose to become cruel herself because there was no other way.
How blackly had her heart rotted away, day after day, while she trained the martial arts she hated more diligently than anyone else?
I didn’t think inner demons could be resolved by this alone.
In the end, the answer had to be found by the person herself.
I just stood there in silence and waited for her to finish crying.
She couldn’t possibly pour out all the resentment she’d built up over the years in just this one round of tears, but if she could empty even a little of it, that would be enough.
“...”
It was hard to listen to a child crying in sorrow.
People said negative emotions were contagious, after all.
Still, her sobbing only grew louder, and like a shadow I remained by her side until the tears finally stopped.
* * *
Jin Young-mae paced back and forth in the courtyard before her quarters, worried about Ha Seo-hwa.
According to a report from a disciple who had passed by, Ha Seo-hwa had followed Yoo Sung-woon to Yoo Yeon-woo’s quarters.
But even so, she was far later returning than expected.
Because this had never happened before, Jin Young-mae was even more confused.
Up until now, once training at Hwa-yeon Hall ended, Ha Seo-hwa would skip even the dining hall and always remain in the courtyard in front of her quarters, training until late at night.
And of all things, her master, Hyeon So-eun, had been away on an assignment for the past five days, leaving Jin Young-mae as the only one in the residence.
Just as she was thinking she might as well go look for her personally and was about to head toward Yoo Yeon-woo’s quarters—
“Ah...!”
From far away, Ha Seo-hwa finally came into view, looking utterly disheveled.
Her clothes were smeared with dirt, and parts of them had been torn by branches.
Jin Young-mae asked Ha Seo-hwa, who stood before her with her head bowed.
“You’re very late. Where have you been all this time?”
“I’m sorry. I was at the Library.”
“Why are your clothes like that? Are you badly hurt?”
“...I rolled around a little in the woods. I’m not hurt. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. Still, next time, be sure to tell me properly before you go.”
Ha Seo-hwa nodded.
Though the exchange was over, Jin Young-mae still couldn’t bring herself to leave.
Ha Seo-hwa remained planted in front of her, thinking over something.
Whenever she wanted to ask something, Ha Seo-hwa often went silent like this.
“Is there something you want to ask?”
At Jin Young-mae’s words, Ha Seo-hwa slowly nodded.
“Senior Aunt. Yoo Sung-woon...”
Before Ha Seo-hwa had even finished speaking, Jin Young-mae felt her heart drop.
Her disciple had returned covered in dirt and immediately brought up another disciple’s name.
Given Ha Seo-hwa’s usual temperament, there was no way this was going to be good.
She didn’t hit him, did she?
Ha Seo-hwa had once struck some outer sect disciples who had been pestering her with a practice sword, landing them in the Medicine Hall.
Back then, Jin Young-mae had made quite a scene, because righteous disciples must never swing weapons carelessly.
But the words that followed from Ha Seo-hwa were not at all what she had expected.
“What kind of story does Sung-woon have, to have joined Mount Hua Sect?”
“...What?”
“What was he doing before he came to Mount Hua Sect?”
Ha Seo-hwa slowly raised her head and looked at Jin Young-mae.
At that questioning expression, Jin Young-mae asked back with a troubled heart.
“Why are you suddenly curious about that?”
“Senior Aunt told me to interact with the other disciples.”
“Telling you about another child’s circumstances is against the ways of the Dao. At the very least, we would need the child’s permission...”
“Sung-woon said something like this. That commoners repay kindness with betrayal even when you help them.”
Ha Seo-hwa repeated the words Yoo Sung-woon had told her.
“But he also said that saving people doesn’t always need a reason.”
In truth, that second line had been Yoo Yeon-woo’s, but because Ha Seo-hwa wasn’t very good with words, she hadn’t conveyed it properly.
More than that, she had promised to keep everything that happened in the forest a secret.
She had only spoken a little because she couldn’t suppress her curiosity, but now it felt awkward to say more.
After hearing the story, Jin Young-mae’s emotions became complicated.
It was a relief that, despite everything he had gone through, Yoo Sung-woon’s nature had not twisted terribly, and that he had instead developed a sense of chivalry.
But it also meant Ha Seo-hwa had learned enough of Yoo Sung-woon’s circumstances to start probing for the truth.
Ha Seo-hwa’s situation was not so different from Yoo Sung-woon’s either.
She worried that telling her too much would only reopen the pain of her grand-disciple’s wounds.
Still, this is the first time Seo-hwa has shown interest in another disciple...
Could it be that she had sensed something familiar in Yoo Sung-woon?
And with the story about commoners repaying kindness with betrayal, it was clear her grand-disciple had shared a deep conversation with him.
At this rate, even if she tried to hide it, she would surely figure it out on her own in short order.
If that was going to happen anyway, wouldn’t it be better to tell her herself?
“That child was originally from a family of physicians.”
In the end, Jin Young-mae began to speak.
“But he lost his parents after being betrayed by commoners.”
She gave Ha Seo-hwa a brief account of Yoo Sung-woon’s circumstances.
Of the physician who had helped commoners out of goodwill.
Of how, under pressure from the bandits of the Black Way, the commoners had revealed that the physician’s household had accumulated a great deal of wealth.
Of how the Black Way raided the physician’s home under the cover of night, killed the physician and his entire family, robbed them, and burned the house to the ground before fleeing.
“He took refuge in a carriage to escape the cold, fell asleep without realizing it, and when he came to himself, he had arrived at Hwaum County. He had nowhere else to go but Mount Hua, so he climbed the mountain in the dead of winter.”
“Wasn’t there anyone who helped him get to Mount Hua...?”
“No. If Yeon-woo hadn’t discovered that child climbing the mountain, there would have been a terrible disaster.”
She hadn’t seen Yoo Sung-woon herself, but that was what she had been told.
“Seo-hwa. As you’ll have realized while listening, it isn’t exactly the same, but his circumstances are similar to yours. He, too, seems to hide his wounds from others just as you do. Isn’t it admirable, really?”
After losing her parents, Ha Seo-hwa had remained buried beneath the snow until the Black Way man left.
It was while she was on the verge of freezing to death that Jin Young-mae, passing by by chance, found her and took her in.
“As your senior sister, you’ll be able to help him a great deal. It will be a good connection.”
Ha Seo-hwa couldn’t answer.
During those two and a half years, her wounds hadn’t healed—instead, they had burrowed deeper into her memory and become an inerasable pain.
And her own heart was already such a mess.
Did she really have any room left in herself to reach out to someone else?
Room to help Yoo Sung-woon...?
“But did something happen between you and Sung-woon?”
At Jin Young-mae’s words, Ha Seo-hwa snapped back to her senses.
“No.”
Ha Seo-hwa stepped out of Jin Young-mae’s reach.
Then she walked dully back into her quarters.
“Nothing happened...”
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