Warmth

In the end, I was dragged out. The village chief's eyes had simply been too much to bear.

"The guest of honor can't go missing, now can he? You're in fine shape. Go on and enjoy yourself!"

When he put it like that, what was I supposed to do? If I had truly dug in, he would have let me off—but that hadn't felt right.

I hadn't asked for any of it, and still they had prepared a banquet for me. Was I really going to slip away for no reason at all? Even a man with no manners had to draw the line somewhere. And it never hurt to mind one's reputation.

I'll watch for an opening and duck out.

I didn't know how to be among people anyway. Guest of honor or not, if I simply hovered at the edge, they would all drift off on their own before long. So I told myself, and went looking for an excuse to flee halfway through.

Food of every kind crowded the tables, and the banquet hall was packed with people.

"Hahaha! Brother, aren't you looking a little too grim? The great hero who cut down the bandits! Am I wrong? Haha!"

A young man laughed and thumped my shoulder.

I turned my head—and in my eyes there was a bandit with his neck sheared clean off. Veins and windpipe lay bare on the neat cross-section, and blood pumped from the cut in thick, gulping spurts.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

No. No, that wasn't right.

I shut my eyes and opened them again. He was only a sturdy man, wearing a good-natured smile.

My stomach turned.

And why is he like this with someone he's only just met?

I stayed where I was only because, now that I had learned martial arts, he was no threat. Otherwise I would have shoved him off long ago. No—I might have struck his jaw and dropped him where he stood.

"Hajin might find that a bit much. Aren't you laying it on rather thick?"

The blacksmith, smiling kindly, peeled the young man away from me.

"Aw, Brother's got a good nature, so it's fine! Right?"

"True enough—Hajin is a good man! Hehehe!"

Human voices, that close, made my head ache and my insides lurch. Memory laid itself over the present and played.

"Nnngh...."

I swallowed the nausea climbing my throat and forced my mouth open.

"My personality isn't particularly good, I'm afraid...."

The past carved itself back into my skull.

...A murderous monster. What was good about a personality like that?

I snorted inwardly and went on quietly picking at the food, until some old woman came up in front of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me.

"Aigoo, you eat well. Just like my grandson, you are. Listen, this time my grandson—"

The crone cackled and gathered me up in her arms.

No. No—this was only a memory.

My head hurt.

"Ah, Brother! Now that the bandits are gone, trade with the next village will be even—"

Rough hands, shaking hard, lifted me.

No. This, too, was only the past.

A wrenching pain twisted through my organs, and nausea rose with it. I felt as if I might bring up everything I had eaten at any moment, and forcing it down with internal energy only made it worse. It wasn't even a situation that threatened me. Even so.

In my sight, the two faces laughing so easily warped and buckled out of shape.

A comrade, torn apart and eaten alive by a demonic beast.

And a dear friend's pale face, dead without a word—only the head left, sitting there alone.

Thump. Thump. My pulse raced, lashing unpleasantly through my skull.

...I couldn't hold any longer.

"...Excuse me a moment. I'm sorry, but I need the restroom...."

Even as I said it I was already half on my feet, soaked through with cold sweat.

"Aigoo. Go on, then, Brother."

A thin, drilling whine bored in through my ears, and pain split my skull as if it meant to crack.

Screams and wails, closer to the cries of ghosts, flooded my mind. My head hurt as if it would break.

I ran, and got out of that place as fast as I could.

"Must've been pretty urgent...."

I ignored the young man. More precisely, there was no gap left in my spinning head for words like that to enter.

A sharp step, and I was in the empty lot where I had first learned martial arts.

"Hk—hk—"

I dragged in rough breaths and tried to hold the surroundings in a wavering field of vision. It was far enough from the banquet hall that the noise came only faintly, and no one else could see me.

I staggered, then folded as if falling.

Thud.

"Hk—hk—hah...!"

On my knees, hands braced against the ground, I panted.

"Gweeeek—!!"

What I had eaten came pouring out of my mouth in a wet splatter.

"Huk—khk...."

My eyes were shot with blood, and the pain crushing my lungs wrung the whole of me. A trembling hand patted at my face. Tap. Tap. Tap.

No blood on it. No wound. It wasn't melting. It wasn't burning. It wasn't caved in. The cheek wasn't sunken. I wasn't buried in dirt, or in water.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Every time my heart swelled, it felt like needles.

Calm down, Yu Hajin. There is nothing there that can threaten you.

I told myself so, over and over, and the lump of fat called a brain played the past anyway, as it pleased.

Nineteen lives of suffering. They had eaten into my heart far deeper than I had thought.

"Hk—kkuk—heup...."

My pupils spasmed. Tears blurred everything.

Through all nineteen lives I had been abandoned by parents, betrayed by masters, and killed by other people in ways too strange to name. There was no world in which I could trust a thing like a person. And I hated that self of mine so much it sickened me. My own face, faintly reflected in the vomit, was revolting.

I wanted to stop. I wanted to rest. No—more than that. I wanted to trust someone.

I wanted to be at ease and simply take the orphanage director for a parent, and the other orphans, in the same lot as me, for friends. Or if not even that—if I could only trust a comrade with my back again. Only that. I wanted to try even that much once more.

But after I had gone out on a hunt with them and come back the only one alive, even that had frightened me too badly to attempt.

Yes. I was a coward. I was afraid a blade would be planted in my back, and afraid the comrade I had trusted with mine would be the one stabbed. So I could do nothing. Nothing except cut other people's throats.

The cross-section of a severed neck. Blood gulping out of it to soak the ground. A head gone pale, pupils unfocused, rolling across the floor. The past wrung my guts.

"Uweeek—kek—kek!"

By now even the retching had fallen away into dry heaves. There was nothing left to bring up. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠And still the old scenes drew themselves in front of my eyes—everyone trembling in terror at the sight of my sword, and their bodies going slack and limp each time that sword moved. Today's memories.

I had known from the very beginning that all the talk of bandits, of how it was all right to cut them down, had been nothing but self-hypnosis.

I was only a murderous thing that had taken dozens of lives. Killing-karma beyond counting. How was I any different from a demonic beast? I wasn't. I was the same.

Yes. I had come too far. All that would ever stain my sword now was blood, stinking of sickening iron. I could accomplish nothing. Perhaps that was as it should be. A sword is a tool for destroying something. It is not a tool for achieving anything.

A physician? A physician cannot raise the already dead. Cannot even make the pain of having been hurt into something that never was.

I was useless. There was nothing I could do.

The comrade who had smiled and said that—until that head, parted from its body, bumped against my foot, I had done nothing at all.

A useless life. I would rather have died. And I could not even manage that as I pleased.

Hopeless. No answer anywhere. I could not properly see so much as a single point of light. Go looking for a way to erase the otherworldly power? Well, gods exist, so perhaps it was possible? Hahaha. What a joke.

...Ah. I wanted to die. Painful or otherwise, I didn't care. Please—just let me have eternal rest.

Powerlessness, emptiness, and self-loathing crushed me until I felt I would powder apart. A person who gives way in even a single place collapses entirely, from that lowest seam upward. Set fire to a fuse, and it is never only the fuse that burns.

"Kuk—kuk—kukkuk...!"

A sound spilled out of me that might have been laughter, or a wail.

How long was I meant to keep cutting throats? The ones I had already cut numbered in the double digits. Dozens. Lives that were by no means light, and I had taken that many with these hands. And still I could not die.

How long was I meant to live, unable to die? I had died nineteen times. A comfortable death? There had been no such thing. Pain with no visible end was a curse. It was despair.

I stared at the ground and cried out to heaven.

I wept, ugly and hitching, and cried out to the sky. Denial clung on, tail after tail, and that end could not be seen. It was like a snake with its own tail in its mouth. The poison in the tail spreads through the whole body, and no matter how one thrashes, one only spins in circles, still biting. A snake that has once bitten its own tail cannot trust even a person.

Drip. Drip. A little blood had already mixed into the tears soaking the earth. Some fine vessel must have burst.

While I was sobbing that wretchedly, a single person entered my qi sense.

...Kill them?

The thought came, and I let it go. Dying over and over, until I could think of nothing but pain, did not seem so bad.

I felt no killing intent. Even so, a certainty had already settled in me that whoever my senses caught would be my enemy. Because it had always been that way.

People who never even showed killing intent. People who did not see a person as a person, and stamped one out the way one steps on an insect. Even those overflowed in this hideous world.

Step. Step. Feet crushing the dry, thinly sown grass. The sound drew nearer.

Whoever owned those steps seemed to hesitate, and then moved again.

A soft weight. Not a cold, biting blade—a hand, holding warmth, settled onto my back.

...What?

The warm hand stroked down my back, once and again, and passed that warmth along. Each time, my whole body took the color of it. For an instant I froze inside it.

...Ah.

Ah.

Ahh.

A person's hand had been warm. A person's hand was not only for gripping a sword.

Memory played again.

The one I had taken for a parent had said it while holding me, small as I was then. And a dear friend, smiling with nothing in it but innocence, back when my age was still a single digit, rose to the surface of my mind.

Why had I lived forgetting all of this?

A sob caught. Tears that had taken in the warmth of that hand ran down my cheeks and fell, drop by drop. I pushed my upper body up, awkward and stiff, and turned my neck, which did not want to turn.

My eyes were too blurred to make out a face. So I squeezed them shut—eyes brimming—and opened them again.

When the veil of tears lifted, what stood in my sight was, of all people, Lee Seol-ah. Not a dear friend. Not a comrade. Not the orphanage director I had taken for a parent. A woman with snow-white hair and deep ocean-blue eyes, a bitter smile on her face, stroking my back.

Our eyes met, and she drew a bright curve at the corners of her eyes and her mouth and smiled wide. A warm smile that could only ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠be called pure.

The scene behind her blew away. My dizzy head lost its anguish for a moment and went blank.

Who she was did not matter. What face she was making did not matter. Because I understood it, right there.

If you do not trust, you will not be betrayed—but a person who cannot lean on anyone has no choice but to collapse. To live leaning on one another is what it is to be human. So what if a knife finds your back? The warmth of a hand passing over it melts even the chill of a cold, biting blade.

I had lived my whole life without knowing that. No. I had forgotten.

"...Ah. Ahh."

I was a fool. As I always had been.