I Have No Right to Speak of Forgiveness to You, but (2)
Even now, whenever she closed her eyes, it came back to her.
The dark of night.
Her father, his face twisted with pain beyond words, swinging his sword again and again.
He always practiced in the rain. He always practiced in the snow. Even when his hands split open and bled, even when his lips cracked and swelled, he kept swinging that sword.
Always. Always.
In her memory, her father was always swinging his sword.
Young Yu I-seol had not understood what drove him so relentlessly.
As far back as she could remember, he had simply always been swinging it. He would open his eyes and practice; he would practice until the sun went down, and when he was so exhausted he seemed ready to collapse, he would clutch a burned-out manual and weep.
At times he suffered. At times he raged. And at times he howled like a beast.
“I’m going back.”
He had held young Yu I-seol by the shoulders and said it to her.
He said that if he could ever bring a perfect plum blossom into bloom, he would take her hand and return to Mount Hua. And then he would beg forgiveness from the elders of the sect.
“I will make the plum blossom bloom.”
Yu I-seol slowly opened her eyes.
“He wanted to go back to Mount Hua. My father did.”
“……”
“I think he believed he needed a reason to do it. He had betrayed the sect and left it behind. A man like that couldn’t just return empty-handed and ask for forgiveness.”
“……Then that manual was…….”
Yu I-seol quietly nodded.
“My father intended to restore it. He thought that if he could restore that manual and bring the plum blossoms back to Mount Hua, they would forgive him for running away.”
At those words, Baek Cheon let out an involuntary groan.
Restore it?
With that?
What a ridiculous thing to do.
Restoration only has meaning when you can at least guess at the original form. To trace the shape of something from a manual more than half lost was no different from trying to find a single grain of sand in a desert.
“Hah.”
Chung Myung let out a small sigh and looked at Yu I-seol.
“So?”
Her gaze fell on the books stacked before them.
Those dozens of volumes were the result of her father’s relentless research into the Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Art. And every one of those deductions, every breakthrough, had been gathered into that final book.
“He grew weaker by the day. Clinging to something impossible eats a person alive.”
“……”
And what had weakened was not only his body.
Before his end came, her father had been little different from a madman. He swung his sword with arms thin as winter branches, stared madly through eyes sunk like a corpse’s, and read the manual like a man possessed. He would write down new theories again and again, only to dismantle and rebuild them over and over.
And yet.
Her father had never reached the sword of Mount Hua.
On a day when snow was falling in endless sheets.
Her father, swinging his sword like a lunatic through the blizzard, coughed blood onto the ground over and over. Then he tore apart the manual he had been building all this time.
“I can’t reach it. I can’t! I can’t…… I can’t…….”
The sight of her father crying so miserably had been burned into Yu I-seol’s memory like a brand.
“I-seol……”
The dying man took her hand.
“You must make the plum blossom bloom. No, you must never become obsessed with the plum blossom! No, that’s not right. You…… No! You mustn’t. You mustn’t become like me.”
Words young Yu I-seol could not understand.
“Will the sect forgive me……? Will they understand me, after I abandoned them and left……? I want to see the plum blossoms of Mount Hua…… The plum blossoms……”
That had been her father’s last will.
Yu I-seol had spent several days in that hut with his corpse. Without eating, without drinking, she had carefully pieced together the torn and scattered pages one by one beside her father’s cold body.
Then someone came looking for the hut. It was Hyun Jong, who had rushed there after receiving the final signal sent by a father who had sensed his own end.
He found Yu I-seol on the verge of starvation and wept bitterly right there on the spot.
“You foolish man……! What were you thinking? What were you thinking!”
Hyun Jong held the young girl and sobbed for a long time. The warmth of his hands still remained in the small of her back even now.
Even now.
Yu I-seol said in a flat voice,
“My father was a fool.”
“……”
“He abandoned Mount Hua, but he never managed to abandon it completely. When he ran away from Mount Hua, he must have wanted another life, but in the end he was more obsessed with Mount Hua than anyone else. So he spent his whole life regretting it and suffering.”
Her eyes were fixed on the bonfire crackling before them.
She still found it hard to understand her father.
If Mount Hua had been so precious to him, why had he abandoned it? If he had left it behind, he should have forgotten it. Why couldn’t he let go? And if he had missed it so desperately, why couldn’t he lower his head and return?
To her, it was still impossible to understand.
“……Sago.”
Dang Soso opened her mouth, then closed it again as if she could not find the words.
What was there to say?
At least at this moment, she could not find anything to offer Yu I-seol. She understood too well how much could be hidden beneath that calm voice.
Then Jo Gul, who had been listening silently, spoke up.
“Then……”
His gaze drifted to the pile of manuals.
“Why didn’t the Sect Leader take those manuals back? Even if they’re not even half complete, they’re still Twenty-Four……”
“Those can’t be used.”
Chung Myung spoke in a bored tone.
“If they’d brought those back to Mount Hua, there would’ve been idiots trying to restore them there too. Then Mount Hua really would’ve been doomed. Everyone would’ve clung to something impossible and suffered for it.”
Hope that is half-baked can be crueller than despair.
In Mount Hua at that time, there was no one who could have restored the Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Art from those manuals. No—there was no one in the world who could have done it.
Even Chung Myung, if he had tried to restore them without knowing the Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Art, would only have produced a new sword technique that belonged to him alone, one that bore no resemblance to the original plum blossom sword art.
What an idiot thing to do.
Chung Myung bit his lip lightly.
Stupid beyond measure, hopeless beyond measure.
And yet……
He must have wanted it that badly.
He probably had no intention of going back to Mount Hua only to die with it. He must have wanted to find some key, some means to bring Mount Hua back to life.
Even if it was nothing but futile obsession.
“So Sago, then……”
“No.”
Yu I-seol shook her head.
“I’m not defending my father. He abandoned Mount Hua. As a disciple of Mount Hua, that is something I can never forgive.”
“……Sago.”
“The Sect Leader says he forgives him, but it’s not something that can be forgiven. How can someone who abandoned the sect ever be forgiven? So……”
She spoke longer than usual, then stopped and closed her eyes.
“That was unnecessary……”
A heavy silence settled over them.
They all knew that clumsy comfort could easily become cheap pity, and so they simply looked at one another and said nothing.
Then Chung Myung said abruptly,
“Enough. Go to sleep.”
The disciples turned their eyes to him.
“We’ve said all we needed to say. It’s not some grand story anyway. If you look at the end of it, it’s just a guy stopping by his father’s grave on the way past. That’s all it is, isn’t it?”
“Chung Myung!”
Baek Cheon sprang to his feet, his face dark with anger.
But Yu I-seol herself only nodded calmly.
“Yes.”
Since the person concerned had said so, Baek Cheon was left speechless for a moment. Yu I-seol said in an even voice,
“I just wanted to stop by. I thought he’d be happy to know Mount Hua is regaining what it once was.”
But Chung Myung stood up with a nonchalant expression.
“Dead people are just dead people.”
“……I know.”
“I thought you were about to say something profound. I’m going to sleep. If we’re leaving first thing in the morning, all of you better get some sleep too. We wasted a day, so now we have to run that much harder to make it up.”
Without looking back, he strode into the hut. The remaining disciples of Mount Hua watched his back with deeply uncomfortable expressions.
Yu I-seol said,
“Sahyung.”
“Hm?”
“We should sleep too.”
“……Yes. Let’s do that.”
Baek Cheon nodded quietly.
He did not feel sleepy at all, but as Chung Myung had said, dragging this conversation on would not be good for Yu I-seol either.
“……Thank you for telling us.”
“No.”
Her gaze lifted once more to the dark night sky.
“He wasn’t a stranger.”
Now.
Yu I-seol suddenly opened her eyes.
Then she looked around in slight confusion. Inside the hut, the disciples of Mount Hua were sprawled here and there, fast asleep.
……When did I fall asleep?
She did not remember falling asleep.
She remembered everyone coming into the hut and lying down together, but……
Was I that tired?
It seemed so. Everyone really did appear to be dead to the world.
Then a voice sounded beside her.
“……Sago.”
Looking over, she saw Dang Soso murmuring something with her eyes closed.
“……Sago…….”
She seemed to be talking in her sleep.
Watching the sleeping profile beside her, Yu I-seol closed her eyes again. But soon she felt a slight sense of wrongness and slowly pushed herself up.
He’s gone.
Chung Myung was nowhere to be seen among those sleeping in the hut.
Where?
Yu I-seol quietly got to her feet.
Then she slipped carefully out of the hut. There was no sign of Chung Myung near the nearly extinguished bonfire either.
She looked around, then her face hardened a little. As if under a spell, she hurried off.
Glug, glug, glug.
Strong liquor was poured over the grave.
The patchy grass growing over the mound became soaked through.
When the bottle was empty, Chung Myung took out another and opened it, then poured that over the grave as well.
He kept pouring for a long while. Then he brought the bottle to his lips.
He drained the liquor in one go, let out a rough “Khur,” and wiped his mouth. Then he muttered bitterly in a low voice,
“What a damn fool.”
He could not understand the man.
If it had been him, he would never have abandoned Mount Hua in the first place. But if, for some reason, he had left a sect that was falling apart, then he should at least have lived well afterward. What kind of idiot, with a little daughter to care for, would cling to an impossible dream and throw his life away? There was no way to defend something like that.
Stupid, pathetic, and goddamn useless.
But……
“Still, I usually like idiots.”
Chung Myung gave a snort of laughter.
As he sat there laughing quietly, his expression slowly changed. Seated before the grave, he took another drink and let out a long sigh. At the end of that sigh, his true feelings spilled out.
“……I’m sorry.”
He knew.
This was Chung Myung’s sin.
What blame did those who left a crumbling sect carry? Who in the world could demand that people cling to a sect that was falling apart and die alongside it?
The ones who stayed were the remarkable ones. The ones who didn’t stay were not the ones at fault.
“Why did you do it, you stupid bastard…….”
You should have forgotten it if you left.
Why did you leave like an idiot and then fail to forget, fail to let go, and spend the rest of your life regretting it?
You idiot.
“I……”
Chung Myung leaned against the grave mound and looked up at the stars in the sky.
“I actually wanted to go to the Northern Sea.”
The moment he heard the words Demonic Sect, blood had surged backward in his veins.
If Hyun Jong had not been beside him, he would have grabbed Beop Jeong by the collar and demanded to know where it was. He did not want to leave behind a single thing connected to the Demonic Sect.
Even now, whenever he closed his eyes, he could see the faces of the brothers and sisters who had died atop the peak of the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains.
Even now.
“But I can’t go. Still……”
If anything were to happen to him, Mount Hua as it stood now would collapse again, just as it had in the past. If it lost Chung Myung as its center, the current Mount Hua would have no strength to withstand the pressure from Gupailbang and the Odaesega.
Mount Hua would fall again, and people like Yu I-seol’s father would appear once more.
So he could not go.
That was why.
Because he could not repeat the same mistake.
Even if it meant his insides rotted away and tore him apart, he could not bear to see that sight again. If the day ever came when Mount Hua collapsed once more, he would never be able to close his eyes again, not even in death.
“I may have no right to speak of forgiveness to you…….”
Chung Myung’s fingertips slowly traced the damp earth of the grave mound.
“……So rest now. Plum blossoms will bloom at Mount Hua again.”
Then, with the bottle still in his mouth, he threw his head back hard. The burn of the liquor scraping his throat felt strangely lonely tonight.
“Right.”
He set the bottle down as if tossing it away and staggered to his feet.
“You said you wanted to see the plum blossoms, didn’t you?”
Shrrrng.
The sound of a sword being drawn rang out in the silent mountains.
“If you want to see them, then you should see them. You wanted it for so long, so I should show you. Yeah.”
Swaying as though drunk, Chung Myung slowly lowered his sword.
Then he closed his eyes.
He could almost see it.
The figure of someone standing alone in this deserted mountain, swinging a sword again and again.
The figure of someone suffering under regrets they could not abandon, trapped by a reality they could not change, clinging only to one sword.
It was almost as if…….
Swish.
Chung Myung’s sword began to move slowly.
Starting with Plum Blossom Gradually Blossoms, the Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Art unfurled.
The perfect original plum blossom sword art, without a trace of embellishment.
The plum blossoms of Mount Hua that Yu I-seol’s father had spent his whole life trying to bring into bloom were now revealing their full beauty at the tip of Chung Myung’s sword.
Look.
You stupid bastard.
This is the plum blossom of Mount Hua you wanted to see so badly.
What once had to fall.
What had to spend so many long years before it could bloom again.
The plum blossoms of Mount Hua, drawn by the complete Plum Blossom Sword Art, began turning barren ground into a forest of red blossoms.
Wherever Mount Hua’s plum blossoms bloomed, there was Mount Hua.
So this place was Mount Hua too.
In the forest of plum blossoms in full bloom, a swordsman danced.
As though cutting away the regrets he still could not send off. The tip of the sword moved beautifully, but with a sorrow that was resolute.
And……
Watching the plum blossoms bloom like a hallucination in the distance, Yu I-seol quietly closed her eyes.
Father……
Her lowered lashes trembled. Then a single tear slipped free.
— Have you found your plum blossoms?
Not yet.
Not yet, Father.
But……
Yu I-seol opened her eyes.
Before her stretched a forest of plum blossoms, like a dream made real.
Someday……
One day, her own sword tip would also bring a perfect plum blossom into bloom.
And when that day came, her dead father would at last be able to rest in peace.
Someday.
Yes. Someday.