Dawn [3]
After I parted from Lee Seol-ah, I did not go to the banquet hall. I went back to my lodgings.
If anyone asked, I could say I had slipped out early because I was unwell. That would be enough.
I knew leaving without a word was a little rude. Today, though, I was simply tired.
Even so...
Thanks to Lee Seol-ah, I felt somewhat better. She did turn a little strange the moment the talk turned to swords, but her comfort had helped me more than I cared to admit. Through her, I had also learned of the ascetics—those who honed the Dao in the hope of becoming immortals. Whatever shape the answer took, they looked all but certain to be a vital clue in severing me from my past life. Seen that way, I owed her a considerable debt. I would have to thank her properly, someday.
With that thought, I slept. For once I did not dream the nightmare that always found me: myself standing at the heart of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, a sword in my hand.
"Oh, you're early."
Lee Seol-ah sat on a rock planed flat across the top and waved, smiling with a brightness that seemed to have no shadow in it. How was a person even allowed to shine like that? She was the opposite of me, who had been taciturn since childhood. Someone from another world, in a word. Ah. She really was from another world.
"Shall we go now?"
"No. We have to change your sword first."
Fair enough. The blade I carried had lost every tooth along its edge. I had known for some time that it needed replacing. Now was as good a moment as any.
"All right. Let's go."
The words were barely out before Lee Seol-ah drew herself up, chest out, and took the lead.
"I happen to know swords, you know. Just follow me."
"I figured."
Her eyes lit the instant swords entered the conversation. What kind of fool would miss that? Such fools might exist. I was not one of them.
"Ah—now that I think about it, I've been awfully bossy. There's someone right here who's been swinging a sword for over thirty years!"
She clapped her hands lightly, as if the realization had only just struck her, and laughed.
"Swinging one, maybe. The sword itself, you know better than I do. Even back then, I never used anything of real quality."
I said it plainly.
"Huh? You said there wasn't even inner energy in that world."
"That's right."
"Then the swords broke easily, didn't they?"
"They did. I even thought it might be better to switch to something finer, rather than keep snapping them."
By then she had turned the whole of her attention on me, head tipped, plainly puzzled.
"Then why...?"
"Once I kept using them, they stopped breaking. Turned out my technique had been the thing that was lacking."
Lee Seol-ah's eyes glittered.
"Whoa... Couldn't you teach me the sword sometime? Just once?"
"I don't see why not. But with your severed meridians, isn't even getting around difficult?"
I knew of the Nine Yin Severed Meridians. The martial manuals listed them as one of the conditions that kept a dantian from ever forming, and the symptoms were written there as well.
"Haaah... If only I didn't have the severed meridians..."
Lee Seol-ah let her shoulders slump as if she were melting, lamenting her lot. I understood. I already knew, down in the skin, how agonizing that kind of powerlessness was.
"Is there really no way to cure them?"
I stroked my chin and let out a thoughtful sound. If I could make contact with those ascetics who cultivated the Dao in pursuit of immortality, might there be a way? The thought occurred to me. Lee Seol-ah's reaction, however, ran somewhere else entirely.
"Huh? This is a little outside what I expected."
Outside where, exactly? While I blinked at her, she went on, grinning.
"I just thought, oh, so you aren't only the blunt type. You're kinder than I expected. I might fall for you."
Watching her cover her mouth and giggle, I frowned and shot back.
"Do you have any idea how many years are between us? Don't say things that'll get us in trouble."
"Oh, come on. Obviously I'm joking."
"There are jokes you can make, and jokes you can't."
I pressed my fingers between my brows and sighed.
"And what exactly can't you joke about? If you truly love someone, what does a few years matter?"
"Even if the other person is a newborn?"
"People don't usually fall in love with newborns, do they?"
"Which is why I'm telling you not to joke about it. The gap between you and a newborn is about the same as the gap between you and me."
"I'm an adult, though."
"And I am well on my way to being an old man."
Lee Seol-ah's lips worked a few times. Finding nothing to say, she pouted and conceded.
"...Tch. I lose."
"Why are you even annoyed?"
A bewildered laugh escaped me as I asked. Talking with Lee Seol-ah, I felt somehow younger. As if something in me had settled.
"If you're going to play, it's better to win, isn't it?"
"Saying a thirty-year gap is fine is the sort of argument you ought to lose."
"Hey, as a joke it's fine!"
"It is not fine at all. Just imagining it is revolting."
Whatever the trouble was this time, Lee Seol-ah pouted again and answered with a thoroughly sulky air. At a glance she looked offended. In truth, she was angling to tease.
"Ugh, telling someone to their face that they're revolting is kind of hurtful, you know..."
She even clutched at her chest. Born for the stage.
"I didn't say you were revolting. I said that enormous age gap was."
"Isn't that the same thing?"
"Of course it isn't. You're just a fresh-faced girl in her twenties. Cute, maybe. Revolting, no. With a gap of thirty years, the problem lies with the older one anyway, and more than that, you aren't actually seeing someone thirty years your senior."
I could have listed more reasons. I did not want to, so I stopped. That much, she ought to understand. Unexpectedly, Lee Seol-ah caught on a different word.
"...Hm? You said cute?"
"Yeah."
"That's unexpected. I didn't think you were capable of that kind of impression at all."
"..."
She was not exactly wrong. The things I found cute amounted to human children, more or less, and even that feeling was faint. Lately I hardly felt it at all.
"Then why me?"
Lee Seol-ah, who had been listening quietly, pointed at herself, puzzled.
"Good question. You do look like a child, for one."
"Excuse me?"
She pouted and clenched a fist no bigger than a child's. A laugh slipped out of me.
"Maybe because you're pure."
"Me?"
"Yeah. You smile more than I did when I was young."
"Isn't that just because you were a little old man even as a kid?"
Was I? It sounded about right. Anyway.
"Even so, the same smile can be a different thing. A clear smile. The whole place around you looks brighter..."
"Wait. Have you fallen for me?"
"Are you insane?"
"Yeah. That one was a bit much, I guess."
The moment I made a face of pure revulsion, Lee Seol-ah laughed again, delighted.
"Why is this girl like this."
"Honestly, if you only heard the words, it really sounds like you've fallen for me."
"I know it sounds strange coming out of my own mouth, but it isn't that, so relax. If I ever harbored romantic feelings for you, I would cut off my own right arm."
"Wow. How much would you have to hate the idea to go that far... This is secretly kind of hurtful."
And what do you want me to do about it.
A deflated little breath leaked from the arc of my mouth.
"Enough. We're here. Let's go in."
I pointed at the smithy in front of us.
"That didn't take as long as I thought."
Excited at the prospect of looking at swords, Lee Seol-ah opened the door with a face that had grown even brighter.
And a girl like this isn't allowed to swing a sword.
Heaven was cruel.
"Welco—oh? What brings the two of you together?"
The smith looked from me to Lee Seol-ah and back again.
"Ah, we came to look at a sword for Hajin."
She jerked a thumb at me behind her.
"Ah... oh, right. Hajin, you feeling any better?"
He said it with an easy, kindly smile. For an instant the face of a bandit whose head had gone flying overlapped with his.
"...Yes. I'm much better now."
I forced a bitter smile.
"Yeah? That's a relief, then."
The smith was in front of me again, laughing as he clapped my shoulder. I was desperately holding down the hand that wanted to climb toward my sword hilt when Lee Seol-ah tapped my waist with a finger.
"?"
I turned toward her. She caught my head and drew it close.
"If it's hard, want me to pick one out by myself?"
She whispered it at my ear. I gave a small nod. She pushed me back and spoke up.
"Hajin left something at the lodgings. He needs to go get it."
"Oh, that so? Sure. Go on."
"...Yes."
I bent in a short bow and hurried out of the shop.
"Haa..."
I sat on a rock and dragged a hand down my face.
I thought I'd gotten better.
Apparently not. No—more precisely, I had gotten better, to a degree. I simply was not completely better. I steadied my breathing, and a few minutes passed. Tap, tap. Lee Seol-ah, a longsword in hand, touched my shoulder.
"...You okay?"
She passed me the sword and watched me with worried eyes.
"Yeah. Thanks."
I took it, hung it at my waist, and dug through my pouch for silver. Her hand closed around my wrist.
"The old man gave it to you for free. Said he couldn't take money when you'd caught those bandits who were such a headache."
"Ah..."
All I ever did was receive. And still I could not even face a person properly.
"There you go again, blaming yourself?"
Lee Seol-ah pushed her face in close, looking displeased.
"Why do you blame yourself for hurting? You bottle everything up and do nothing but blame yourself, so of course it's hard. Either let some of it out, or at least stop the self-reproach."
"...Thank you."
I set a faint smile on my face and rose.
"So... are we going now?"
"Yeah. Let's go."
I said it quietly, then scooped her up.
"Eek?! Wh-what are you doing?"
Lee Seol-ah flailed.
"You can't use lightness art."
"This position is really uncomfortable."
"If you've got a problem with it, learn lightness art."
"..."
She pouted in silence. Pout or not, I unfolded my lightness art in the direction she reluctantly pointed. Calling it lightness art was generous. It was nothing more than feeding inner energy into my legs and running.
"W-wow...! You're incredibly fast!"
"Want me to slow down?"
"No. This is kind of fun."
Lee Seol-ah grinned. I looked down at her and smiled, pleased.
Feels like I've gained a little sister.
The age gap was awkward, of course, but what of it. Being with her, I felt, for the first time in a long while, as if I were resting. That was enough.
...I should never have let myself grow content, back then.