Once More, in Hindsight (3)
“Huff, huff… Huff… Huff!”
The sky was yellow.
Namgung Dan realized that saying the sky was yellow wasn’t just some figure of speech. The sky in his vision really was stained a sickly, jaundiced color.
No—it wasn’t just the sky.
“Huff… Huff…”
Everything in front of him was slowly turning yellow. Or, to be more precise, it felt as though the color was being drained from the world altogether.
“Nggh….”
In that instant, his foot caught on a stone. Before he could even think to resist, his body pitched forward.
No, it nearly pitched forward.
“Up you go!”
But before he had even tilted halfway over, someone darted in from the side and seized his shoulder, wrenching him upright.
“…….”
Namgung Dan stared blankly at the person standing beside him. Yoon Jong, was it…?
With a mild smile, he said, as though they had narrowly avoided disaster,
“Looks like you still have some strength left, so don’t go falling over yet. Come on, let’s keep running.”
“…….”
“Hmm? Is something wrong?”
“……y-”
“Pardon?”
Namgung Dan’s foot weakly pushed forward.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
And then, like a marionette whose strings had been threaded wrong, he began to run forward again in a stiff, jerking wobble.
How did it end up like this?
Right. It had started very simply….
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“A wager?”
“Yep.”
Cheong Myeong said with a bright grin.
“You say you want to be treated properly, right? Well, just demanding it out of nowhere doesn’t sound very convincing, so why don’t we first check whether you’re actually worthy of that treatment?”
“…….”
“If your side wins, I’ll spit back out every coin I’ve taken from you, and I won’t so much as lift a finger against you from then on.”
“R-really?”
“Instead, if we win, your side won’t complain and will do whatever I tell you to do. Simple enough, yeah?”
Namgung Dan looked at Cheong Myeong with a cautious expression.
“But the contest….”
“Ah.”
Cheong Myeong waved a hand as though he already knew what Namgung Dan was about to say. The gesture looked exactly like someone shooing away an annoying fly.
“I know what you mean. I’m not some shameless bastard who’s gonna say we should fight, okay?”
“Th-then…?”
“They’ll do it.”
Cheong Myeong pointed behind him at the Seven Swords.
“And if it’s something like a martial contest, the result’s way too obvious, so let’s make it fair. Something fair.”
“……fair?”
“Yeah.”
Cheong Myeong clapped once, loud and sharp, then said,
“A race.”
“…….”
For a moment, Namgung Dan’s confused face went slack with disbelief, but Cheong Myeong continued as calmly as ever.
“The rules are simple. You’ll start running first, and our kids will chase after you. Whoever gets caught is out. If even one of you doesn’t get caught before sunset, then your side wins.”
“No, that’s….”
“However!”
Before Namgung Dan could even finish speaking, Cheong Myeong cut him off.
“That still feels a little unfair, so our side will wear twenty-geun ankle weights on each arm and leg.”
At that, the faces of the Namgung Clan swordsmen twisted horribly.
“……Are you looking down on us right now?”
“Hmm? Was that too much? Then let’s add another thirty-geun or so across the body.”
“Sect Leader!”
Namgung Dan shouted before he could stop himself.
“Why are you yelling?”
Cheong Myeong dug a pinky into his ear and blew out a breath.
“If you’re scared, then don’t do it.”
“We’ll do it!”
“D-Dan!”
“Brother!”
Namgung Dan ground his teeth.
“But keep that promise. Absolutely!”
Cheong Myeong smirked.
“You’re saying the words I was about to say for me. You’d better be the one who keeps it.”
The Namgung Clan warriors voiced their worries as they looked at Namgung Dan.
“Will this be all right?”
“This is….”
“Enough!”
Namgung Dan cut the others off.
“No matter how you look at it, Namgung isn’t known for footwork. If we get caught even while wearing ankle weights, what excuse would we have? Especially when the only way to lose is for every one of us to be caught?”
“…….”
“Are you going to swallow this insult too?”
The Namgung Clan swordsmen’s faces hardened.
Watching them make up their minds, Namgung Dan ground his teeth and glared at Cheong Myeong.
There’s a limit to arrogance.
He would not have been this angry if Cheong Myeong had simply challenged them to swordplay. But those bastards had chosen not swordsmanship, but internal force and stamina.
Weren’t those exactly the fields in which the prestigious Namgung Clan took the most pride?
“I know the Sect Leader is a remarkable man, but this time, you’ve been too arrogant.”
“Kheh. The world really is broad, isn’t it? Even someone who can point out my arrogance exists.”
“…….”
“But I feel like you should save that sort of talk until after you win, don’t you think?”
Looking at Cheong Myeong’s sly face, Namgung Dan clenched his jaw and nodded.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
That’s how it was….
The first inkling that something might have gone wrong came when he reached the starting line.
He had seen the Mount Hua Orthodox Swordsman, his arms and legs wrapped in iron ankle weights, ask the Mount Hua Divine Dragon,
— What do we do?
— Crush them.
— Got it.
It had been a strange feeling.
He didn’t know about the Mount Hua Divine Dragon, but the Mount Hua Orthodox Swordsman was not someone he could dismiss lightly. And the moment he heard him speaking so casually like that, a sense of foreboding had brushed his chest.
Still, Namgung Dan pushed the thought away. Even so, he believed it was impossible for them to catch up while wearing ankle weights that together must have weighed more than eighty geun.
“Eighty geun” was putting it lightly; at that weight, it was basically the same as carrying another person. Was it even humanly possible to catch someone while sprinting with a man on your back?
That was why Namgung Dan didn’t hesitate. He thought of it only as a chance to flatten that Mount Hua bastard’s nose and as an opportunity to properly show Namgung Dowi, who had stayed silent through all this, what the right course of action really was.
Even after they first took off, he had thought the same. That remained true even when Mount Hua’s disciples began chasing them after a while. The Seven Swords only trailed behind, unable to close the distance Namgung had initially opened.
But….
A little later, Namgung Dan realized why the Mount Hua Divine Dragon had specifically added the condition that the race would continue until sunset.
Exactly half a shichen later, the pursuers began to speed up.
Being caught by people wearing eighty-geun ankle weights all over their bodies? That was a matter no one’s pride could accept.
Sensing danger, the swordsmen of the clan ran like their jaws would fall off.
And from that moment on, hell began.
— Hey, you’re a bit too slow there.
— Aigoo, let’s pick up the pace, shall we?
— When did you boil yourself up into a snail?
Those insane bastards from Mount Hua closed in tight on their backs and started jabbing at them.
It was enough to drive a man mad.
Those who were practically carrying another person’s worth of weight on their bodies clung to the backs of the sprinting Namgung warriors and casually kept talking to them—how was anyone supposed to stay sane?
— Hey, you can’t give up already!
— You’ve still got more in you!
— Cheer up!
They might as well have mocked and cursed at them, the damned fools.
Under the “considerate” care of the Mount Hua disciples, Namgung quite literally ran until his legs felt like they were about to fall off. By then, this was no longer a contest; it was a matter of pride.
But after a shichen passed, people began collapsing all around him, foaming at the mouth.
“Grrrlllkk.”
“Well now. One’s gone here.”
“Uuugh—!”
“Hey! Don’t puke!”
What drove them most insane was that the Mount Hua disciples chasing behind them didn’t look tired at all.
Namgung Dan shakily lifted his head, which felt heavy as iron. Bodies were sprawled everywhere.
It was annihilation. A clean annihilation.
The proud descendants of Namgung, who had survived to the very end even in the war with the Water Bandits, were now collapsed in this estate like sickly chickens.
H-how did this…?
With his head thrown back, Namgung Dan staggered and flung out a leg.
They were the Namgung Clan.
He was certain their internal force, in its purity, would never lose to any sect under heaven. And their endurance, forged from childhood through brutal training, should have been incomparable as well.
Then how had this happened?
“Uu, urp….”
Vomiting surged up all at once. Namgung Dan instinctively clapped both hands over his mouth.
No matter what, he couldn’t show such a disgraceful sight.
I-I’m going to die….
By now, it wasn’t even a matter of the sky being yellow or not. Every time he lifted a foot, his limbs seemed to move independently, and every time his foot touched the ground, it felt as though his body folded in half and snapped open again.
Then a voice clicked its tongue behind him.
“Looks like they’re done here too.”
“No, I think they can probably still go a little farther, don’t you?”
“Then let’s make a wager, Sahyeong. Whether they can hold out for one more quarter of an hour or not. I’m betting they can’t.”
“……I’ll bet on them not being able to.”
“Aw, come on. What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If it’s a wager, then one must make a cool-headed judgment.”
Those words nearly severed what little willpower Namgung Dan had left.
And yet he kept running, and running again. There was a reason he had to.
“Come on, put some strength into it!”
Each step he took brought a shifting blur to his vision, and in that blur he saw a familiar face.
So…so-so….
Her face, clicking her tongue at him, ripped through Namgung Dan’s mind in a tangled mess.
How… how is So-so…?
The Dang So-so he knew had no particular connection to martial arts. Whenever he had seen her while their families interacted, hadn’t she always looked exactly like the daughter of a prestigious household in her splendid robes?
And yet that same Dang So-so was now running after him with a perfectly calm expression, cheering him on from his side.
Crazy….
Thud.
At last, Namgung Dan’s body lost the struggle and met the ground.
He sprawled face-first into the dirt and panted hard. Ragged air rushed into his lungs, dragging dust with it, but he couldn’t even find the strength to turn his head.
It felt as though his whole body had been repeatedly hammered to pieces with a great club. This was beyond “hard” or “painful.” Had there ever been a time in his life when training alone had reduced him to this state?
“No way. You couldn’t even last two shichen?”
“……We weren’t even running that fast.”
“So-so. What happened?”
“Wh-why are you yelling at me! The Tang family isn’t like this!”
The voices bickering beside him never quite reached Namgung Dan’s head.
His mind was murky, as if submerged underwater. If he closed his eyes like this, he honestly felt as though he could sleep forever.
But….
It was the most absurd thing, and yet Namgung Dan could still hear it clearly: the sound of someone’s footsteps approaching him at an unhurried pace.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
With great difficulty, he pried open his eyelids.
“Up you go.”
He could distinctly feel someone nudging him over with a foot, and then the blue sky filled his eyes. The sun sat high in the heavens.
From one corner of that bright blue sky, someone suddenly leaned into view.
A face full of mischief and bad intent.
“Hey.”
“…….”
“Should’ve made you wear another hundred geun before we started, huh?”
“…….”
“You crying?”
“…….”
“Sahyeong, he’s crying.”
“Quit it, you bastard!”
“You’re not even human!”
“Hey. Cover him up! Cover him up! Hurry!”
This place… this place was a demon den.
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