Distrust
I seized my own throat without thinking, desperate to stop the dry heaves.
Creak. Crrrack.
The sensation of blood vessels collapsing, of the bones in my neck slipping out of place, cleared my mind.
"Khak—khak! Keuheuk, kek—!"
A human body that could not endure the shock coughed up blood on reflex.
"A-are you all right? Those internal injuries look bad.... Come to our house first!"
Warm words. They were unmistakably warm. So why did a pain flare through my mind, as if I were being stabbed with a needle dipped in boiling water?
I shook my head hard and forced the words out past the nausea.
"...Keuheuk, hnn.... There is no, kelok! need, kolok! for that.... Keuheu...."
The sickness rearing up inside my skull kept me from even looking the young man properly in the face.
Damn it. If I meant to learn what this otherworld was, I had to listen to people speak—and like this, I couldn't learn a thing about the place.
"No, but even so...."
"Huu, hu...."
I drew a deep breath and pushed myself up, bracing on the wooden sword.
"...Hah."
A laugh that died halfway mixed with bloody phlegm and crawled up my throat.
"Instead.... could you, kuuk.... show me somewhere to stay?"
At words squeezed out with such effort, the young man nodded.
"Ah, well. That much I can do. But who are you, coming into our village...."
"...Yu Hajin. Merely.... something like a wanderer."
The two voices ringing inside my skull were hundreds of times worse than nails on iron, but I barely managed to hold the vomit down. Thump. Thump. My heart raced, flooding my whole body with blood—proof that I was taking a conversation with the man before me as a threat.
"Uh.... all right. I'll show you to an inn. Got any money?"
"No, heok.... No. I do not. If work would cover it...."
"Fine. I'll cover something like that. Follow me for now."
He spoke looking a little dazed, then started off. The nausea surging up made answering too hard, so I gave a small nod and hauled my staggering body upright.
Two weeks had passed since I fell into this otherworld. I fought down the revulsion that kept thrusting its face above the surface of my consciousness, spoke with people, gathered what I could—and came to a rough understanding of what kind of world this was.
Set against the martial novels I had read as a child, the place was much the same. Unlike ordinary tales of wuxia, though—set in China, with other real nations existing alongside it—the whole of this world seemed bound together under a single name: Gangho Murim.
Even the nations settled there had failed to unite as one. They were split into three: the Starlit Kingdom, the Soil Kingdom, and the Moon-Array Kingdom. Raised upon the names of sun, moon, and stars, the three were each so vast in power that they had agreed not to fight one another.
Of course, since humans were the ones doing the ruling, that balance was hardly well kept. The Starlit Kingdom and the Moon-Array Kingdom maintained a slightly closer bond, and there were already signs they meant to join forces and invade the Soil Kingdom. And the place I stood was that very Soil Kingdom.
If war came, I would be called up too. The core of me was past fifty, but the shell was twenty. Then again, the system here would not be the same as Korea's. Maybe not.
Thinking that, I ran my hand over an iron sword so old that half its teeth were gone. I had gotten it for free from a smithy that had meant to scrap it. At the time I had thanked them—and still suspected whether some trick had been worked into the blade.
"Huuuu...."
A long sigh stretched out through my parted lips. Shadow lay across the face my palm had just swept over.
I can no longer trust human beings. I had learned that a person can grow as ugly as they please for the sake of their own desires, because of their own feelings. Even those who, hearing the excuse that my memory was poor and that I had simply come to my senses to find myself here, looked on me with sympathy and pity and not a shred of doubt—there was no telling whether they hid a knife behind their backs.
I was the same, right now. Afraid of taking the knife hidden at someone's back, wasn't I hiding a knife at my own? The name of that knife was Distrust. A knife concealed for fear of being cut by a knife. It would have been more accurate to call it a thorn.
There was nothing to be done about it. I had not raised the thorn. The thorn had pierced through me and lodged there. I want to trust people. I cannot. The only thing I can trust is myself—only I can know whether I am hiding a knife at my back, what dream I am dreaming.
...In the end, I am alone again.
"...."
I shut my mouth tight and took up the old sword. This life, too, I mean to train with the blade. I don't want to sit huddled and powerless any longer. If I pile up even physical strength, there will be more that I can do. That was the reason.
This was a world with inner energy, something akin to the mana of my second life, and martial arts that made use of it, so I ought not to be stopped by a wall. I had examined myself, and in this life my meridians were normal. Learning the arts should pose no great problem. For that, first I would need an art to learn.
I gripped the sword tight in my right hand and turned the door handle with my left.
Clink. Clink. Coins chimed in my hand—money earned working for two weeks. With this much, I ought to be able to buy one decent martial art. So I judged, and headed for the market street.
"Fresh radishes! Radishes for sale!"
"Silk brought in from the Starlit Kingdom! Come and have a look!"
People raising their voices to hawk their wares.
"Keuk...."
Crushed from above and below by headache and nausea, I clapped a palm over the side of my head. This feeling was shit. One human voice, and I end up like this. A few threads of red blood ran from my bitten lip and gathered at my chin. The gazes on me were complicated—pity, sympathy, worry, curiosity, fluster. Mostly those. Even those came at me as something revolting.
Then—
"A-are you all right...?"
Among them, a woman beside me asked, worried. Her skin was clear, her jawline thin and fine, so she looked frail—a beauty with white hair and blue eyes. I had wondered whether white hair and blue eyes were even possible in a world this close to China, and then I accepted it. Another world. I had lived through parents abandoning me on ground where lava surged up. What did appearance matter?
Shaking off the stray thought, I forced the corners of my mouth up into an awkward smile. A kind of defense. The sort who means to stick you with a needle will do it even to a smiling face, but the sort who means to spit will not spit on one.
"...I am fine. It is only that my head hurts a little...."
"There's quite a bit of blood on your lip, too...."
She looked at me with worried eyes, then rummaged through her clothes. Was she about to draw a dagger? It was possible. My hand settled on the sword hilt without my meaning it to.
"Here. Wipe with this."
She offered a faint smile and held out a handkerchief patterned with flowers. My shoulders jerked, and I took my hand off the hilt. The thought had come a beat too late.
"...Thank you."
I dipped my head slightly and received the handkerchief in both hands.
"Oh, it's nothing. And you don't have to give the handkerchief back. I'm just giving it to you."
She said it with a smile in her eyes.
"...Thank you. It is shameless of me, but.... may I ask just one thing...?"
I let the end of the sentence trail.
"Of course. Anything."
"Martial arts.... where might one obtain them...."
"Ah, martial arts.... There's a bookshop over thaaat way."
She said so, and pointed into the empty air with a white, slender index finger.
"...Thank you."
I bowed my head deeply toward her.
"Why do you keep thanking me? It's really nothing."
Whatever she found so funny, she covered her mouth with her hand and laughed in soft little sounds. Unlike me, who could do nothing but force the corners of my mouth up, it was a clear laugh. I was staring at her with empty eyes when—
"Well then, if we get the chance, let's meet again."
She smiled and waved.
"...Take care."
I inclined my head in return, then walked in the direction her finger had indicated.
Staring silently at the flower-patterned handkerchief, I thought that I envied the woman just now. I envied her, who could smile at another person as if it were nothing, as if it were only natural. In the first life, and in the second—across all twenty lives put together—I had never once truly made a smile. A bitter smile. An empty laugh. Nothing but hollow smiles like those. I had truly never made one.
Before I turned fifteen in the first life, perhaps I had laughed purely. But I could not remember. The face of the orphanage director I had regarded and followed as a parent, the faces of my friends, even the dear scent that used to rise through the orphanage—I had forgotten all of it. In my memory they were nothing but lumps of meat, dead with their blood and guts spilled outside. Lumps of meat I had turned my back on and fled.
Unable even to remember them, I had suspected a colorless, odorless poison on a handkerchief, and for an instant I felt wretched beyond measure. Ugly enough to make me sick. Revolting. None other than me.
Thud. Thud. Thud!
I drove my fist into the pit of my stomach three times, hard. With a crack, broken ribs jabbed into my lung. What the broken ribs pierced was the lung—so why did it feel as if a hole had been punched through my heart? I could not say.
I wiped the blood that had burst from my mouth with the handkerchief and looked up at the sky. Not a cloud. Clear and blue. Even the sky could not speak for what was in me. With eyes emptier than that empty sky, I thought about what I had come out to do.
Right. I had meant to learn martial arts. If I learned them—if I grew stronger—would this feeling get better? It would not. Still, if I forged a body impervious to every poison, I would have no need to suspect poison on a handkerchief given in kindness. If I forged a body impervious to blade and sword, I would not have to worry about taking a knife in the back, either. If I grew stronger, might this emptiness be slaked, even a little?
I don't know. Why do I have to swing a sword? I don't want to do any of that. I just want to rest.
Ah. Right. To rest, I have to sever reincarnation. For that, I need to grow strong—to cut the number of rebirths to the minimum, and to increase what I can do.
...Fuck. Why, of all people, did I have to be caught in a curse like this?
Even as I poured a venom aimed at no one I could name out through the hole in my chest, I spoke to the bookshop owner and bought a martial manual. Fortunately, the money was not short. Was it fortunate? Had I felt any relief because the money was not short? I did not particularly feel anything of the sort, but I decided to think of it that way. Lately I had had far too many stray thoughts. Might as well blow them off—and go back and swing a sword. I am an idiot who can do nothing but cut, stab, and kill, so I ought at least to be good at that.
Rustling through the pages to confirm the manual was not a fake, I headed for an empty lot where few people passed.