Life Was Never Fair to Begin With (3)
Gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp.
"Kaaaah!"
Chung Myung tipped the liquor into his mouth and wore an expression of utter bliss, as if he’d stumbled into paradise itself.
"That’s the stuff! That’s the stuff!"
It had been so long that the liquor felt like it was clinging to his tongue, refusing to let go.
Shaolin was a monastery, after all, so there was nowhere to get alcohol here. He’d been dying for a drink, and Wi Lip-san, with unexpected tact, had brought ten whole bottles as a gift.
"Hahhh. This is why you’ve got to keep the right people around."
Of course, Chung Myung wasn’t the kind of person who couldn’t live without liquor.
But that’s just how people were, wasn’t it?
When something was always within reach, you didn’t really go looking for it.
But the second someone said, You may not drink here,
naturally, the craving only grew stronger.
Hm?
You’re saying that’s just me?
Ah, come on. No way.
Chung Myung grinned and tore a strip from the dried meat, tossing it into his mouth. If there was one thing to regret, though…
"The side dish’s a little weak."
He was still growing, which meant he should be eating well and getting bigger, but he was drinking with scraps of dried meat like this.
If the senior disciples in heaven saw him, they’d probably have cried tears of pity.
The same Chung Myung who, if the senior disciples in the immortal realm were to hear him, would casually think about flinging a barrage of curse words at them.
"Tsk. Nothing to do about it. Make do with what you’ve got… huh?"
Chung Myung tilted his head and shook the liquor bottle hard.
"…It’s gone?"
He turned and looked at the pile of empty bottles in the corner.
"One. Two. Three… nine. Nine?"
Then this one made ten.
The liquor was gone.
His hand, still holding the bottle, began to tremble.
No liquor?
That couldn’t be right.
He still needed more.
Chung Myung shook the empty bottle one more time and let out a low groan.
"Just one more bottle would’ve been nice."
What now?
Chung Myung slowly turned his head toward the window. It was narrow enough that a person would have trouble slipping through, but for him, it was nothing.
So he could just slip out, go to the village for a bit…
— Absolutely! For these two days, you absolutely must not cause any trouble! Absolutely!
Hyun Jong’s desperate voice rang in his head, making him flinch.
"Grrrgh."
After a long internal battle, Chung Myung finally shook his head.
I really have mellowed out a lot.
Back in the day, he’d have ignored the sect leader’s plea and everything else in an instant and gone straight to a tavern the second he wanted a drink.
Ah, so that’s why Sect Leader Senior Brother used to twitch every time alcohol came up?
Well, sorry about that, Sect Leader Senior Brother.
— Hey, you horse-nosed bastard! And you call yourself a Taoist!
What the hell, is some wild beast howling out there? I’m hearing nonsense.
"Ahem."
Chung Myung cleared his throat low in his chest and clicked his tongue.
"A shame, but…"
He had already made a glorious mess once, so ignoring the sect leader again and sneaking off now felt a little awkward.
With a sigh, Chung Myung opened the door and stepped outside.
"No one here?"
Before, Baek Cheon and the others had been stationed right in front of Chung Myung’s room.
But perhaps because the Mount Hua disciples from Hwayeong Gate had arrived and things were in an uproar, or perhaps because it was embarrassing to openly show they were guarding Chung Myung in front of the secular disciples, no one was there now.
There’s no kitchen around here either.
Even if there were, it was a temple kitchen. If he searched it a thousand times, would liquor suddenly appear?
Hmm.
As he scratched his cheek absentmindedly, his eyes suddenly sharpened.
"No, wait. No, wait. There’s no guarantee that Hwayeongmun’s leader only brought my liquor. He might’ve set some aside for the sect leader or the elders."
Chung Myung smirked and started walking.
The leader of Hwayeong Gate’s quarters should be over there…
"Hm?"
He stopped dead.
Through the window along the corridor of the hall, he caught sight of someone in Mount Hua’s black robes hurrying off somewhere.
"Oh?"
Chung Myung’s eyes lit up as he grabbed the window frame.
"Tsk tsk. This is why I can’t take my eyes off anything. The moment you look away for a second, trouble starts. Always trouble."
After spouting nonsense that wouldn’t convince a toddler, Chung Myung leapt out the window. Then, with his hands clasped behind his back, he began strolling slowly toward the place that person had just run off to.
Whoosh.
The sword cut through the air.
Though sweat streamed down his face and soaked him completely, and though his legs had begun to tremble, Baek Sang kept swinging his sword without stopping.
Even as his hands softened and split open, blood seeping through the skin, his sword never once faltered.
It’s because of me.
This had been a chance for the sect to achieve a feat so magnificent it could be proudly proclaimed to the world. But because he had lost, Mount Hua had missed the chance to make its name ring across the land.
What hurt him even more was that no matter what accomplishments Mount Hua might achieve from this point on, he would not be able to contribute to them.
He alone.
Crack.
His lower lip, clenched too hard, split open slightly, and blood trickled down.
Why am I always…
He knew, of course.
He knew he was becoming stronger.
He was defeating disciples of prominent sects he had never even dared to face before. The Baek Sang of the past, who would have frozen at the mere sight of disciples from Zhongnan, could never have imagined it.
And yet this unease would not leave him, because of the Cheong generation that had surged ahead of him at such speed.
Yoon Jong and Jo Gul.
Baek Sang knew it. He was no longer even the second in the Baek generation. Yu I-seol had already gone to a place he could no longer reach, and even among the Baek generation disciples trained by Chung Myung, some had already overtaken him.
To make matters worse, the Cheong generation was starting to produce people who outpaced him too, not counting Yoon Jong and Jo Gul.
Strength was relative.
No matter how much stronger he became, if people within his own sect kept pouring past him, how could he comfort himself by clinging to the fact that he was improving?
What he had ignored and pushed away again and again had finally become reality. He could no longer pretend this situation didn’t exist.
Clench.
His grip tightened around the sword. A dull pain ran up his hand, but instead of loosening his hold, he only clenched harder, as if he meant to snap his hand in two.
It happened because I’m weak and stupid.
It wasn’t as though he had ever dreamed of something grand.
Even before Chung Myung appeared, there had been Baek Cheon — a mountain he could never hope to climb.
His dream had simply been to support someone like Baek Cheon and help make Mount Hua into a better sect.
Yes, something modest like that…
Baek Sang’s sword came to a stop.
Slowly lowering it, he exhaled heavily and looked up at the sky.
The moon hung large overhead in the night sky, empty of even a single cloud, gazing down at him.
Am I just not suited for Mount Hua?
He wasn’t thinking this simply because he had lost.
In truth, he had been thinking it for a long time.
The Mount Hua of the past had been a sect led by him and Baek Cheon. But compared to Mount Hua’s rapidly changing pace after Chung Myung’s arrival, he was far too slow a person.
Sometimes he felt overwhelmed trying to keep up with that growth. He had never shown it, but still.
And yet…
Once it came to this, he couldn’t help thinking it.
Maybe I’m the one hindering everyone else.
Was he, someone with no particular talent, occupying the second-in-command seat of the Baek generation and blocking the path of those who could grow even further?
Baek Sang quietly looked up at the moon hanging in the sky.
It’s bright.
He had never expected to be the sun.
That belonged to someone else. What he had wanted was to be the moon — a place where, after the bright sun had illuminated the world and gone off to rest for a while, it could look down upon the darkness.
But now, for him, not only the moon but even the stars felt too far out of reach.
What was he supposed to do now?
"Eheh."
Then a small voice came from behind him.
Baek Sang whirled around.
"Huh?"
A face he had never expected stood there.
Seeing Chung Myung walking toward him at a leisurely pace, Baek Sang frowned slightly.
"…How did you know I was here?"
"You were making so much of a scene that it’d be stranger if I didn’t know."
"I left ages ago."
"It took me a bit to go down to the village and come back."
"Hm?"
The village?
What for?
Chung Myung pulled something from the bundle he was carrying and tossed it to Baek Sang.
Thunk.
Baek Sang instinctively caught what Chung Myung had thrown.
The moment he saw the white bottle now in his hand, his eyes widened.
"…Liquor?"
"How about a drink?"
Looking at Chung Myung’s grin, Baek Sang let out a quiet breath and glanced around.
Is this really all right?
This was Mount Song.
A sacred place where martial artists from all over the world looked upon with reverence.
Even if they were outside Shaolin’s main gates now, drinking alcohol on Mount Song was far beyond what Baek Sang’s sense of propriety allowed.
But…
"You’re not drinking?"
"I-I am!"
Sometimes, a little deviation wasn’t such a bad thing.
Carefully, Baek Sang opened the flask and took in the scent rising from it.
"Ugh."
The sharp bite in his nose made it unmistakably strong liquor.
"I was going to buy something better, but I figured this suited today more."
"…"
Needlessly thoughtful, this guy.
Without a word, Baek Sang raised the bottle to his mouth.
Gulp. Gulp.
"Kaaah!"
As the liquor went down, it burned his throat. But right now, he didn’t hate the sensation.
"Heh heh heh."
Watching Baek Sang drink, Chung Myung chuckled, then started drinking straight from the bottle himself.
Gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp.
"Hah! This is what living is about."
Still grinning, he rummaged through the bundle again. Before long, roasted duck was spread out in front of Baek Sang.
Baek Sang shook his head.
Liquor and meat on Mount Song.
It was something he had never even imagined.
And yet the reason he didn’t jump to his feet and walk away was probably because, somewhere along the line, this no longer felt so strange to him.
Because of this bastard.
Baek Sang narrowed his eyes and looked at Chung Myung.
The bastard who had suddenly dropped into Mount Hua one day and turned everything Baek Sang knew there completely upside down.
Without a word, Baek Sang took another drink.
For a while, neither of them spoke. Only the sound of drinking and the chirring of insects quietly spread through Mount Song.
Chung Myung was the first to speak.
"So."
"Hm?"
"Feeling any better?"
"…"
Baek Sang said nothing, simply staring up at the night sky.
"People lose sometimes. Why get all sulky over it? And that guy’s someone you can’t beat right now. Even if someone else had stepped in…"
"No, it’s not that."
Baek Sang cut him off.
Chung Myung looked at him with unexpectedly calm eyes.
He didn’t press, didn’t ask again.
He simply waited for Baek Sang to lay his heart bare.
"A duel is supposed to be like that, isn’t it? If you meet someone stronger than you, no matter how skilled you are, there’s nothing you can do but lose. I was prepared for that from the beginning."
"Hmm."
"What’s choking me isn’t that. It’s that at some point, I realized the others in Mount Hua were running at a different speed from me."
Chung Myung looked at him silently.
"I knew. I knew my talent with the sword wasn’t that remarkable. And now I’ve learned one more thing: the reason I could be a little stronger than the others was just because I’d trained longer than they had."
Baek Sang’s voice remained calm, almost placid. Perhaps because these were thoughts he had held inside for so long.
"That’s why I’m scared. Scared that everyone will leave me behind. No, if I could at least keep up from the back, then maybe that would be enough… but in the end, I’m afraid I’ll lose sight of those who move ahead of me. That someday they’ll get so far away I won’t even be able to see them anymore, and that I’ll end up being a burden to Mount Hua."
He took a sip of liquor and spoke as if exhaling a sigh, as if lamenting.
"Of course, it’s probably a story you’d have a hard time understanding."
"Yeah. I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about."
"…Then never mind."
Baek Sang let out a long breath.
It wouldn’t be easy for Chung Myung to understand his feelings. Chung Myung was the kind of person who lived in a completely different world from geniuses like Baek Cheon or Jo Gul.
A rabbit cannot understand the heart of a phoenix that flies in the heavens. But by the same token, a phoenix cannot understand the heart of a rabbit hopping around on the ground.
To Baek Sang, the gap between Chung Myung and himself was that vast.
"So the problem is that Uncle-disciple lacks talent?"
"…It’s not exactly that…"
Baek Sang hesitated a little, then let out another string of sighs.
"I don’t know, Chung Myung. Mount Hua found its path. You were the one who made that happen. But I…"
"Ah, enough."
Chung Myung cut him off cleanly.
"You’re probably about to start wallowing, aren’t you? I can’t stand that kind of crap."
Baek Sang shot him a sidelong glare.
What an insolent bastard.
He’s the one talking like this?
"Instead."
Chung Myung smirked.
"Want me to tell you a story?"
"…A story?"
"Yeah. An old story. There was someone like you, a long time ago."
The loneliness settled deep in Chung Myung’s eyes.
Seeing that expression on Chung Myung’s face, something Baek Sang rarely ever witnessed, he unconsciously fell silent.
What exactly is this guy…
What did he carry inside him? What was he thinking?
Strength crept into his hand around the bottle.