Bankruptcy? As If, You Bastards! (5)
"Hm?"
Un Geom, sitting up, squinted at the bright light spilling through the window.
These little brats.
Mount Hua's rules were fairly strict.
Back when instruction was passed down strictly through master and disciple, a disciple had to rise before his teacher, wake him, pay his respects, and prepare breakfast to offer him.
The times had changed, and that sort of master-disciple relationship no longer carried on, but the ones staying in Baekmae Hall still had a duty roster. Someone was supposed to wake the White Plum Hall Leader, Un Geom, and offer their morning greetings.
But today, no one had come.
"Good grief. Those little punks."
He'd let them off the leash for a while, and they'd grown lazy that quickly.
With a slight frown, Un Geom got to his feet.
The fact that no one had come to greet him didn't merely mean the ones assigned to do so were asleep. If anyone had been awake, they'd have woken the others assigned to the morning greetings. That meant every single child in Baekmae Hall was still asleep.
Come to think of it.
He remembered that a new child had entered Baekmae Hall yesterday.
"Those little brats again…."
Un Geom's brow creased a little deeper.
He already knew the children sometimes did bizarre things like initiation rites and the like. As a teacher, he ought to stop them, but children living together needed a certain amount of bonding of their own.
As for Jo Gul, that boy would keep stirring up trouble without end, but as long as Yoon Jong was there, things could be sorted out before they got too out of hand.
Still, if the morning greetings weren't being made on time, it might mean yesterday's welcome ceremony had gone a little too far.
Furrowing his brow, Un Geom quickly changed clothes. He put on his robe, fastened his sword at his waist, then pushed open the door and strode outside.
For now, I should give them a proper scolding.
With decisive steps, Un Geom headed for Baekmae Hall.
The moment he rounded the corner, thinking that as soon as Baekmae Hall came into view he would bark a sharp order and wake the sleeping children, he was about to shout, "Ga—"
Go!
But before he could force the word out, he sucked in a sharp breath and froze. At the same time, his eyes went as wide as saucers.
W-what is this?
He lifted a hand and rubbed his eyes. A bizarre sight lay before him.
What is this. Hell?
For a brief moment, some strange thought crossed his mind, but Un Geom immediately came to his senses.
This was Mount Hua! So whatever he was seeing now was something happening at Mount Hua.
But he could not understand why something like this was happening at all.
He wasn't hallucinating, was he?
Rubbing his eyes once more, Un Geom blinked and looked out at the scene again. Nothing had changed in the slightest.
"Uh…."
Not knowing what sort of reaction he should even have, Un Geom let out a weak groan, and then a despairing sound reached his ears.
"Grrrrrgh. Ngh!"
"Oh, dear. I'm dying. Oh, dear…."
"Mommy… take me home, please…."
Un Geom stared blankly at the children groaning on the ground.
...
Were these really the same children he knew?
A child was, by nature, such a thing. At times, their ignorance brought trouble upon others, and at times, their cunning left people disappointed.
But children who still retained their innocence had a vitality that warmed the hearts of those who looked at them.
Yet there wasn't the slightest trace of vitality in the children before him now.
What the hell happened to these kids? They look like rags.
Where had all the fresh-faced little brats gone, and why were only these beggar-like wretches rolling around on the ground?
Un Geom swept his gaze around in shock.
"Grrrrrgh…."
"I'm gonna die… really die…."
Studying the children sprawled everywhere, Un Geom blinked.
These look like my martial nephews, don't they?
They were in pretty bad shape—no, quite a lot worse than that—but those blackened little things were undoubtedly his martial nephews, the Cheong-generation disciples staying in Baekmae Hall.
What on earth did they do?
What kind of thing could turn children who had been perfectly clean just yesterday into utter street urchins overnight?
Wooden swords and sacks were scattered all around the ragged children.
And those were… what?
Un Geom knew what he needed to do. If his guesses had limits, there was no reason to waste time thinking too hard. There were well over a hundred mouths here that could answer his questions.
"W-what on earth happened here?"
The moment he spoke, heads snapped around all at once. The children lying on the floor and groaning turned to look at Un Geom together.
The light returned to the eyes of children who had been half dead!
"Great Martial Uncle!"
"Great Martial Uncle!"
"By the Heavenly Venerable!"
That last one sounded a little odd, but there was no doubt that the children were welcoming him fervently. Some of them looked ready to burst into tears at any second.
For someone like him, whose job was to keep the children under control, that was unusual. No, not just unusual—he had never in his life seen those children welcome anyone so enthusiastically.
"Kkhh-haaah! Great Martial Uncle!"
"Why are you only arriving now? Why!"
"Great Martial Uncle, we missed you!"
How should he put it?
Those children, who always spent their time watching everyone else's mood, were so intensely welcoming that a strange sense of pride welled up in his chest. Some inexplicable emotion came surging over him.
But Un Geom quickly came to his senses and shook his head.
No, no.
This was not the time to be moved by something like this.
Look at the children's state. They were caked in dirt and sweat as if they'd been through a war. The sight of their pitiful arms and legs trembling uncontrollably made his insides churn even more.
"What in the world happened?"
The children who looked ready to grab hold of Un Geom and cry their hearts out went oddly quiet when the question fell. They only glanced surreptitiously toward the back.
They're looking at someone?
Un Geom's gaze followed theirs. There, sitting in a heap with his mouth hanging open, was Jo Gul.
"Jo Gul?"
"...No. Behind him."
"Behind him?"
His gaze, fixed on Jo Gul, shifted farther back.
"Th-that brat?"
Un Geom's eyes, which he had thought could not possibly widen any further, somehow defied all reason and opened even more.
The new one?
Was his name Chung Myung? What in the world was that brat doing now?
Un Geom tilted his head. Chung Myung was doing something bizarre. A wooden sword was slung over his shoulder, and several large sacks were hanging from it.
"What are those sacks?"
"They're dirt sacks."
"...Why dirt sacks?"
He asked, but he already thought he knew the answer.
Look.
Among all the beggar-like wretches there, the one who stood out as the most gaunt was bending and straightening his body while carrying dirt sacks bigger than his own head, all tied to a wooden sword, trembling all the while.
"Huuuuuuuuuuuh."
Watching him made even Un Geom feel his entire body tense and start to sweat.
Though he looked ready to collapse any second, he kept trembling and somehow managed to hold his balance as he straightened again.
Plip. Plip.
Sweat dripped from his chin in steady drops. His entire body was so drenched that it looked as if it were steaming.
Isn't he going to die doing that?
As Un Geom watched the face flushed bright red, the veins standing out, and the features twisted like some demon from hell, his own body unconsciously tensed too.
If there were a better way to describe being "exhausted," no form in the world would be more convincing than that. Chung Myung straightened his back with a groan, then bent over again.
You'll die, idiot!
It wasn't because Un Geom was particularly forgiving. In fact, he was someone who favored stricter training than most. Iron grew harder the more it was struck, and people grew stronger the more they trained. If his disciples underwent grueling training, he would not only refrain from stopping them—he'd applaud them.
But even to Un Geom, the training Chung Myung was enduring now had gone too far.
No—then the reason these kids are in such a state…?
They did this while training together?
"G-great Martial Uncle! Please save us."
"We'll die if this goes on."
Come to think of it, the children's entire bodies were soaked through with sweat. It was so bad it looked as though they'd worn freshly washed clothes without bothering to dry them first. Just thinking of all that dampness as sweat sent chills down his spine.
Then they weren't all asleep?
They had been training from dawn and ended up like this?
"...Since when have you been doing this?"
"Since the hour of the Rabbit."
They had been at it for more than an entire hour?
"...Why?"
It was a perfectly natural question, but no one answered it. They only wore expressions that said, desperately, If we tell you that, we'll die.
No way.
No, impossible. There was no way.
Did that even make sense?
The children here were third-generation Mount Hua disciples. No matter that Mount Hua was not what it once had been, these were still people who practiced martial arts. Among the third-generation disciples were plenty of children who had trained for more than five years. Compared to those who had not learned martial arts at all, they had to be much stronger.
And yet they were saying that they ended up like this because they couldn't even handle that one small child?
W-wait a second.
Wasn't Jo Gul, one of the more prominent and capable disciples among the third generation, now collapsed on the floor, breathing only because he had to?
Yoon Jong?
Un Geom's eyes quickly searched for Yoon Jong, the eldest disciple.
"What the hell…."
What looked like Yoon Jong was sprawled on the floor.
Why is he like that?
Jo Gul at least still retained something that looked vaguely human, but Yoon Jong had become nearly impossible to recognize as a person. Seeing him with his face pressed into the dirt while his backside stuck slightly up in the air, gasping for breath, made Un Geom's chest ache so badly that tears almost welled in his eyes.
"Th-then…."
Un Geom began to speak, then shut his mouth again.
No, training is fine.
Now he understood what they'd been doing. It was obvious from looking at Chung Myung. The children must have come out at dawn to do strength training.
Mount Hua was a sword sect that prized speed and brilliance, yes, but it also trained physical strength alongside everything else. The foundation of all martial arts began with the body, after all.
But what in the world did they do to make children who were perfectly fine look like this after only an hour?
Un Geom lifted a hand and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
Turning his eyes aside, he saw that all the children were staring at him with shining eyes. Their faces were full of hope and trust, as though Un Geom would be the one to solve this situation.
Don't make that face in that state.
It was genuinely putting tremendous pressure on him.
"Ahem."
Clearing his throat to steady himself, Un Geom turned his gaze to Chung Myung. First he needed to understand exactly what was going on here. How he should respond would come after that.
"Bring that child here."
It was the moment White Plum Hall Leader Un Geom firmly engraved the name Chung Myung into his mind.
And he had no way of knowing that, over the course of his entire life, that name would become the most important one he would ever learn.
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