Growing Up Means This. (1)
Glug, glug, glug, glug, glug.
“Krrrraaaah!”
Cheong Myeong grimaced as he downed the liquor in one heroic gulp, then casually wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
“Tastes damn good. Heh, there’s nothing like drinking while looking out at a river.”
Then he glanced sideways at Namgung Dowi, who was sitting beside him, and said, “Why aren’t you drinking? Don’t like booze?”
“Ah, no. It’s not that I dislike it.”
“Then what?”
“It’s just a little awkward…”
Namgung Dowi looked down at the bottle in his hand. Raised under the strict laws of the noble Namgung Clan, he wasn’t used to drinking straight from the bottle like this.
And not only that—what could be said of the awkwardness of sitting on grass like this?
“So it’s hard to drink when you don’t have to mind your manners?”
“It’s not that, exactly…”
Cheong Myeong snorted and tilted the bottle back again.
“Krrrraaaah.”
He wiped his mouth once more and said flatly, “Guys like you always end up becoming boozehounds later.”
“...Pardon?”
“We’ve got one in our lot too. That Shaolin bald monk. At first he went on and on about how ridiculous it was for a monk to drink, and now the man’s gone crazy and steals my liquor.”
“...A Shaolin bald monk? A-are you talking about Monk Hye Yeon?”
“Yeah. That bastard!”
“Monk Hye Yeon drinks alcohol...? A-and steals the sect leader’s liquor?”
“I said yeah! He does!”
Cheong Myeong ground his teeth.
“I raised a tiger cub, that’s what I did.”
“....”
Namgung Dowi, who had been staring blankly at Cheong Myeong, suddenly burst out laughing.
“...You think that’s funny?”
When Cheong Myeong glared at him, Namgung Dowi hurriedly smothered his laugh and waved a hand.
“No, it isn’t that the sect leader is amusing. It’s the situation that’s funny.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
Cheong Myeong let out a long sigh. Then Namgung Dowi quietly looked at the bottle in his hand, slowly raised it to his lips, and drank just as Cheong Myeong had—gulp, gulp, gulp.
“Khehk! Kheheh-khehk!”
“Oh?”
“Wh-what kind of liquor is this! Cough! Cough!”
His face turning bright red, he coughed repeatedly. It was the sort of fierce liquor that felt like it would burn a hole straight through the throat.
Cheong Myeong grinned.
“Now that’s liquor.”
“T-this isn’t liquor! It’s poison!”
“Tsk tsk. This is why rich kids are such a pain.”
Cheong Myeong clicked his tongue as if deeply disappointed.
“So? Can’t drink it?”
“I...”
Namgung Dowi trailed off for a moment, lost in thought, then looked back and forth between Cheong Myeong and the bottle. After a brief pause, he bit his lip and began gulping down the liquor again. Cheong Myeong clapped.
“Oh. You can drink.”
Glug, glug, glug.
“Kyaaah. So you do know how to drink.”
Glug, glug, glug, glug.
“...Huh?”
Glug, glug, glug, glug, glug.
“H-hey! Stop drinking, you lunatic!”
Alarmed, Cheong Myeong yanked the bottle out of Namgung Dowi’s mouth.
“Khhhaaaaaaak!”
As if he’d swallowed deadly poison, Namgung Dowi clutched his reddening throat with both hands.
“...Do all Namgung bastards have no sense of moderation?”
Cheong Myeong muttered, “Though, I swear, I don’t remember them being this stupid back in the day…” Meanwhile Namgung Dowi was still coughing so hard he couldn’t recover.
After a while, the coughing finally subsided. He spoke at last, breathless. “Krrr... This is nice.”
“You don’t look nice.”
At Cheong Myeong’s comment, Namgung Dowi shook his head and looked down at the bottle in his hand.
“If this had been in the past, I might have said this wasn’t liquor at all... But now I think I understand why people drink such things.”
“You don’t look like you understand anything at all.”
“Heh heh. I feel... good, Sect Leader.”
“You’re slurring.”
“....”
Namgung Dowi shook his head several times as if trying to steady himself.
He had only been drinking for a short while, yet it already felt as if heat was rising through his body. Ordinarily, he would have circulated his internal energy to suppress the drunkenness and flush it out, but now he didn’t particularly feel like doing that.
“Sect Leader.”
“What?”
“Is there... another bottle?”
“....”
Cheong Myeong didn’t answer. Instead, he looked up at the distant sky.
Why do only idiots gather around me?
Was the world wrong? Or was he the one who was wrong?
How would I know?
“Kaaah!”
“Why the hell did you just yell like that?”
“No reason.”
After glaring once at the sky, Cheong Myeong flopped backward onto the ground.
“Ugh. I’m getting drunk.”
Namgung Dowi watched him for a long moment, then quietly called out, “Sect Leader.”
“What.”
“...Why did you call me out here?”
“Huh?”
Namgung Dowi let out a low sigh.
“Isn’t there something you want to say to me?”
“I just called you out.”
“Pardon?”
“To drink.”
“....”
“Drink. Drink up. What’s there to life anyway? Just drink.”
Anyone who expected something from Cheong Myeong was guaranteed to be disappointed beyond all reason. In Mount Hua, that was as natural as breathing, but regrettably, Namgung Dowi hadn’t yet learned that fact.
“Ha...”
A laugh and a sigh escaped him together. Turning his head to gaze at the darkened Yangtze River, Namgung Dowi murmured, “The truth is... the truth is, Sect Leader.”
“Yeah?”
“I didn’t want to leave here yet.”
“....”
Cheong Myeong didn’t bother answering, but Namgung Dowi now seemed not to care as he slowly continued.
“No, to be exact... it wasn’t that I didn’t want to leave here. It was that I didn’t want to return to Anhui. To be honest, I was a little... afraid. If I left here and went back to Anhui...”
He would truly have to become the patriarch and lead the Namgung Clan.
That was still far too heavy a burden for Namgung Dowi. It was a duty he had thought would not fall on him for at least another twenty years, and yet it had come crashing down in front of him overnight.
Worse still, it was not the responsibility of a normal Namgung Clan, but of one that had lost more than half its strength—perhaps even more than eighty percent of it.
Namgung Dowi said with bitter self-mockery, “A little while ago, I was angry.”
“....”
“I got angry because things weren’t going the way I wanted. I pretended to be disappointed, asked why they wouldn’t trust me and follow me.”
Namgung Dowi slowly shook his head.
“But... maybe that anger wasn’t really directed at them. No, it wasn’t. What I was truly angry at was... myself, for thinking the same way they did, and perhaps being even more frightened than they were.”
“Hmm.”
He covered his face with both hands and spoke in a strained voice, almost like a sob.
“It’s difficult, Sect Leader. Too difficult. The burden is still too heavy for me. I don’t know what I should do...”
“....”
“If only I had been given twenty years... no, even ten years... then perhaps I could have been a little stronger. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so shaken.”
“Hrrrm!”
Cheong Myeong, who had been silent until then, suddenly shot upright. Then he turned a fierce gaze on Namgung Dowi.
“...Sect Leader!”
When their eyes met, an odd anticipation bloomed in Namgung Dowi’s chest.
Perhaps he would chide him for being too weak.
Perhaps he would pat him on the head and say he had done well enough.
Either way would be fine. What Namgung Dowi needed now was someone who could judge him and lead him, someone who could tell him whether the choice he had made was right or wrong.
Perhaps... if it was this Mount Hua Divine Dragon, he might be able to guide him.
But...
“There.”
“Yes?”
Cheong Myeong pointed his chin toward the bottle sitting beyond Namgung Dowi.
“Hand me that bottle next to you. There should still be some left.”
“....”
“What are you waiting for?”
“The liquor...?”
“Yeah, that.”
“....”
“Hurry up.”
“Yes...”
Namgung Dowi’s tension deflated all at once. He let out a useless laugh and handed the bottle over to Cheong Myeong.
What exactly am I even talking about?
He knew it already.
No one could help him, and no one could advise him. In this situation, all other people could do was spout obvious platitudes. In the end, everything was something he alone had to endure and resolve.
He knew that... he knew it, and yet—
Cheong Myeong pressed the bottle to his mouth, and his throat bobbed powerfully up and down.
Gulp! Gulp! Gulp!
“Krrrraaaaaah!”
Cheong Myeong yanked the bottle from his mouth and let out a satisfied cry before setting it down.
“Hey, that’s kind of interesting.”
He clicked his tongue at Namgung Dowi.
“What would’ve been so different if you’d had to go through this ten years from now?”
“...Pardon?”
“And if it had been twenty years later, you think it would’ve been easier?”
“That’s...”
“Stop it, kid.”
Waving a hand, Cheong Myeong said with the air of a sigh, “You think the world gets easier when you get older? That’s just a delusion. Now that I’ve grown older, I know that’s not true. If anything, your head just gets more complicated than it was when you were young.”
“S-Sect Leader?”
Grown older?
“Hah. Back when I was young... that feels like ages ago.”
“....”
Was this bastard seriously making fun of me?
Namgung Dowi stared at him in dumbfounded confusion, his expression sour. Then Cheong Myeong asked calmly, “Was everything easy for Namgung Hwang?”
At that, Namgung Dowi’s body stiffened.
“...My father...?”
He reflexively tried to say something, but Cheong Myeong’s next words shut his mouth.
“Was the father you know really the sort of man who got through life that easily?”
“....”
“No, of course not. Saying a man like that lived easily would be an insult to him.”
Right. Of course it wasn’t possible.
Namgung Hwang had always done his utmost, in every situation and at every moment. He made mistakes sometimes, failed sometimes, but he had always been a man who tried to do everything within his power.
“Then if Namgung Hwang were here right now, would anything be so different?”
“....”
“No. It wouldn’t.”
Cheong Myeong shook his head.
“Things might have improved a little, but the worries your father would have had to bear would never have been small compared to yours. He would have had to shoulder more expectations and more responsibility than you do.”
“....”
“A person is just a person. There isn’t anyone who doesn’t hurt when stabbed, and there’s no one with a heart made of iron. Even those who look impossibly strong hurt just the same, and get hurt just the same.”
Namgung Dowi bit his lip hard.
“But, kid. Growing up means this.”
“Yes.”
“It means learning how to hurt and still act like you don’t.”
Namgung Dowi closed his eyes.
He thought of Namgung Hwang, carving a path ahead of him.
Yes. He must have been in pain. He must have been suffering. In body, and in heart.
But he couldn’t afford to hurt. He couldn’t afford to suffer. Because Namgung Dowi was behind him. Because there were those on Maehwado whom he had to protect. Because there were people there who looked only to him.
“Carrying something on your back... that’s what it means.”
“....”
“Pain is only natural, and hardship is only natural. No, you have to be in pain and you have to struggle. For the one who carries more, for the one who tries to lead even one step farther, a time of comfort never comes.”
Cheong Myeong took another swig of liquor.
His gaze, fixed over the Yangtze, seemed to wander somewhere far back into the past. But only for a moment; soon enough, his eyes shifted to the manor behind them.
To the place where everyone of Mount Hua lived.
“I don’t really know much... but...”
Cheong Myeong looked straight at Namgung Dowi.
“There’s definitely something you received from Namgung Hwang. Something he desperately tried to pass on to the next generation.”
Before he knew it, Namgung Dowi had clenched his fist tight.
There was. Yes, there definitely was.
Namgung Hwang had clearly passed it on to him. What the Namgung sword was.
That the Emperor’s Sword did not mean to rule or dominate, but to stand in the very front and protect.
How could the one who had to block the enemy and break through the headwind not be burdened, not worry?
“That alone is enough.”
“....”
“What you needed has already been handed to you. That’s what it means to carry things onward.”
“Sect Leader.”
“If you still don’t know, then think about it.”
“About what...?”
Cheong Myeong grinned.
“What you want to leave behind for the generations that come after you.”
“....”
“That’ll be the road you’re supposed to walk.”
Namgung Dowi stared at Cheong Myeong in silence for a long time. Then he turned his gaze toward the Yangtze.
Namgung’s spirit flowed in that river.
What kind of life had they wanted Namgung Dowi to live?
“Sect Leader.”
“Yeah?”
After a long silence, Namgung Dowi slowly opened his mouth.
“Do you think... do you think I can do well?”
“Who knows. I can’t say that much for sure, but you do seem like you’ll be a good patriarch.”
“...Pardon?”
Cheong Myeong turned to look behind them and grinned.
“Complaining means you trust the person. There’s no way someone trusted by everyone could fail to become a good patriarch.”
Namgung Dowi turned his head to follow Cheong Myeong’s gaze.
“Young Patriarch!”
“Young Patriarch, where are you?”
The Namgung swordsmen they had left behind had all come outside and were searching for him.
“I...”
Namgung Dowi tried to say something, but his lips pressed tightly together instead. His head slowly lowered. Soon his shoulders began to shake in small, tremulous bursts.
Cheong Myeong watched him and smiled. It was a smile as faint and warm as moonlight.
“So let’s drink tonight, kid.”
“...Yes, Sect Leader.”
The night over the Yangtze deepened.
With the faint scent of liquor, the rich smell of grass, and the river wind drifting over them.