Here You Were (1)
“Why!”
A voice heavy with rage rang out.
No—perhaps it was grief. Or resentment.
“Why? Why won’t you let me go, why!”
At that cry, the middle-aged man who had been staring at the distant moon slowly turned his head.
The weight in his gaze pressed down on Chung Myung’s whole body, but he didn’t back away. A pair of eyes as still as a lake and a pair as fierce as a blazing volcano collided without yielding even a hair’s breadth.
“Do you truly not know why?”
“Sect Leader Brother!”
“If you are absent from this place, we can no longer guarantee victory. No—
we would be doomed to fail.”
Grit.
At Chung Mun’s words, Chung Myung ground his teeth.
“That bastard... he’s gone missing.”
“……”
“Do you not understand what that means? Huh? That damn Cheong Jin bastard went missing in the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains!”
“I know.”
“Sect Leader Brother!”
Chung Mun slowly closed his eyes.
His expression remained composed, but the faint tremor of his eyelids betrayed the truth: he was anything but calm.
“We are not the only ones who have lost someone.”
“……”
“Everyone has lost something. So why should we alone be allowed to throw a tantrum?”
“A tantrum?”
Chung Myung’s face twisted at once.
“You’re calling it throwing a tantrum to go find our junior brother?”
“Chung Myung...”
“I don’t know what that damned greater good is supposed to be, but are you saying we should just let our junior brother die because of that crap? He might still be alive!”
At the fury rippling through Chung Myung’s voice, even Chung Mun fell silent for a moment, as though words had deserted him.
“What the hell is it worth? Damn it! What the hell is it worth!”
Watching Chung Myung’s face, as if it might explode at any second, Chung Mun let out a voice thick with regret.
“...The greater good, is it?”
Then he gave a faint smile.
It was so low it almost sounded like a bitter laugh, perhaps even mockery, but either way it was a smile too sorrowful to face lightly.
“Do you think such a thing still remains? In me?”
“……”
“Perhaps it existed once. But now it has been worn down to nothing, until only one thing is left. Do you know what that is?”
“...What is it?”
“The future.”
The word came out of Chung Mun’s mouth with unwavering certainty.
“If we fail to drive them back, we will have nothing left. And to drive them back, we absolutely need you. You. Chung Myung, the Plum Blossom Sword Saint.”
“……”
“And even so, you would go? Even so, you would leave this place alone and go rescue Cheong Jin? What do you think Cheong Jin would say if he came back, only to find all of us dead? Do you think he’d thank you for saving him? You fool!”
A clear thread of blood finally slipped from Chung Myung’s tightly clenched mouth. The blood pooled between his teeth and stained his lips as if they’d been painted with red rouge.
Chung Mun slowly shook his head.
“He wouldn’t want that. The thing that matters most to him isn’t you or himself—it’s the children we left behind.”
“……”
The coppery smell of blood filled the air.
It was in his mouth. It clung to the end of his words.
So bitter it made the world spin.
“If you truly want to search for him, then go after this war is over.”
“Senior Brother!”
“Do you think only we have lost someone?”
Chung Mun shouted back. The fury and anguish that had never shown on his face burst out all at once.
“You think you’re the only one who wants to go find him right this instant? I’m worse than you! I am! Damn...”
In the end, the curse trailed off with a bitter snarl, and he bit down hard on his own lip.
“Damn it...”
His voice was shaking horribly.
Chung Mun was the Sect Leader of Mount Hua, the one leading the Central Plains against the Demonic Sect.
How much burden must have been crushing those shoulders?
“...I sent him.”
“……”
“I’m the one who gave him that dangerous mission. If you want to blame someone, blame me.”
By then, all emotion had been washed clean from Chung Mun’s face.
“As the Sect Leader of Mount Hua, I cannot permit you to go searching for Cheong Jin. Return to your place and wait.”
“……”
Chung Myung, too, looked at him with a face emptied of feeling.
The smiles that usually surfaced whenever they looked at each other were gone. The two of them stared coldly at one another, their expressions hard as steel.
Chung Myung opened his mouth without expression.
“If that is the Sect Leader’s command.”
“……”
“Then I will have to obey.”
At that emotionless tone, Chung Mun’s eyes trembled violently.
“Only...”
A cold sneer touched Chung Myung’s mouth.
“Can you fill the empty space left by what you’ve lost with what you’ve gained?”
Chung Mun finally squeezed his eyes shut. Chung Myung’s frozen voice, cold as a blade, sank straight into his chest.
“I don’t understand the meaning of gaining something by losing what should never be lost.”
“...Chung Myung.”
“I...”
Blood trickled down from Chung Myung’s mouth in scattered drops.
“I won’t accept this decision, not until the day I die.”
With that, Chung Myung turned away without even waiting for a reply. He widened the distance between himself and Chung Mun without the slightest hesitation.
He clenched his fists so hard they seemed ready to burst.
Grit.
Grinding his teeth and pounding his chest would change nothing.
So he walked on in silence, then looked back with eyes full of venom. But the sight that met him stole all the fury and strength from those eyes.
Chung Mun’s shoulders—the broad shoulders that had always embraced and supported every Mount Hua disciple—were trembling helplessly.
Half-crouched as if he didn’t know what to do, the sight of his back as he silently wept was more than Chung Myung could bear. He turned away.
Cheong Jin...
- Senior Brother.
Remembering Cheong Jin’s clear, smiling face, Chung Myung shut his trembling eyes.
Sorry.
Sorry.
...I’m sorry.
* * *
Chung Myung stumbled forward as if bewitched.
One step, then another.
He lurched on as though he might collapse at any moment, yet kept going, and going.
Yu I-seol followed silently behind him. Her eyes caught on Chung Myung’s back.
That back had usually seemed like a mountain—sometimes embracing them like the sea, sometimes towering like a cliff that pierced the heavens and became the destination they all strove toward.
But now, Chung Myung’s back looked simply pitiful.
As if...
Father.
It was like seeing her father’s back again, the one faintly preserved in her memory.
The back of someone who had failed to accomplish what he had to.
The back of someone who had clung to something he could never achieve.
Why did that gaunt back overlap with Chung Myung’s now?
Chung Myung’s staggering steps quickened little by little. Yu I-seol matched his pace and walked faster too.
At that moment, Mount Hua’s disciples, who had spotted the two of them, sensed the strange atmosphere and rushed toward Yu I-seol.
“Sago?”
Yu I-seol raised one finger to her lips.
“Don’t disturb him.”
Baek Cheon looked back and forth between her and Chung Myung’s backs, then nodded. And without another word, they all began following Chung Myung in silence.
One step.
One step.
The sage walked ahead, and those who inherited his will followed behind. But the sage’s steps, though filled with conviction, still trembled with a heartbreaking fragility.
Chung Myung’s gaze on the mountain ahead was the same as it had always been in the past.
Cheong Jin... wasn’t that kind of man. He wasn’t someone who would simply let go like this.
Even if his body, having bled too much, was slowly fading away. Even if the urge to just drop everything and rest gnawed at his soul.
That bastard... wasn’t the kind of man to let go and give up.
Step.
Chung Myung began climbing the mountain.
Think.
If I were Cheong Jin?
If I were that bastard, what would I do?
There’s no going back now. His breathing was hanging by a thread, and there was no way to break through the Demonic Sect bastards swarming all around and return to his martial siblings, back to Mount Hua.
Then what?
If the him from a hundred years ago had stood where Chung Myung stood now, and had seen that mountain while desperately keeping his fading vision together, what would Cheong Jin have tried to do?
Chung Myung’s steps quickened as if under a spell.
He knew. He knew it all too well.
You would’ve done this.
Because Chung Myung would have done the same.
It was not a very tall mountain, and so it could never be Mount Hua.
And yet... in this faraway land, it was the closest thing to recalling the atmosphere of Mount Hua.
I have to go back.
Yes, he had to go back.
Even if his body remained here, he had to return to Mount Hua. Even if his flesh rotted, he had to return to Mount Hua.
The place he had left. The place they had lived.
Just as Chung Myung, even in death, had never been able to forget it and had ultimately gone back there.
Cheong Jin must have been the same.
With every step Chung Myung took up the mountain, his certainty deepened.
Upward, and still upward—he did not rest for even an instant. With every step, hesitation faded away.
At last, just as he neared the summit, Chung Myung stopped.
He stared blankly ahead.
And the Mount Hua disciples behind him watched his back, holding their breath.
They didn’t know why this place gave off such a feeling. But they couldn’t bring themselves to speak to Chung Myung.
This place...
Looking quietly around, Yoon Jong narrowed his eyes.
“Sasuk.”
“...What is it?”
“Doesn’t this look a bit like Mount Hua?”
“...The mountain is a little steeper than most, that’s all.”
“Ah, no. That’s not what I mean...”
Yoon Jong looked around a few times, then met Baek Cheon’s eyes.
“The place where the Mount Hua Sect is... yes, doesn’t this place resemble that? If we were to say this mountain was Mount Hua, then this would be the spot where...”
“……”
Only then did Baek Cheon survey the surroundings again, his face stiffening. A soft sigh slipped from between his neatly pressed lips.
“Ah...”
He thought he understood what Yoon Jong was trying to say.
If this mountain were Mount Hua, then the place they stood now would be where Mount Hua Sect was located. It wasn’t an exact match, but for those who had lived their lives treating Mount Hua like their own home, it was certainly a place that could feel similar.
Baek Cheon’s gaze shifted to Chung Myung.
Then you are...
At that very moment, Chung Myung dropped to his knees on the spot. With both knees, he crawled through the grass growing over the ground, tearing at the vegetation with trembling hands and groping repeatedly at the earth with bare fingers.
The Mount Hua disciples simply watched in silence.
They had no idea how to help.
No.
It felt more like they shouldn’t help.
This was not something they should rush into. They couldn’t explain why, but everyone present from Mount Hua thought the same thing.
“...What is he looking for?”
At Dang Soso’s whisper-soft question, Yu I-seol answered without even turning her head.
“Fox den.”
“……”
“He must have dug a hole. To carry the manual out in his mouth.”
“Ah...”
Dang Soso nodded and looked at Chung Myung.
Just then, Chung Myung’s hands, which had been fumbling over the ground, suddenly froze. His fingertips trembled slightly.
Clearing away the overgrown brush revealed a small pit.
A hole like that wasn’t strange on a mountain. It was tiny—probably a den dug by a wild animal that had long since been abandoned and collapsed with the passage of time.
But Chung Myung’s hands were now shaking so badly they looked pitiful.
At first he had been digging with hesitant fingers, but then his hands grew faster and faster until, at last, he was tearing into the earth like a madman.
“Haa... ugh...!”
A sound too broken to be called a cry burst from his throat. Dirt sprayed over his head and back. Watching it, Baek Cheon found himself taking an involuntary step toward him.
“Chung Myung...”
But at that instant, Yu I-seol’s hand clamped down on his shoulder.
Baek Cheon turned, and Yu I-seol quietly shook her head.
“……”
Baek Cheon bit his lip, then finally nodded. For now, all they could do was watch Chung Myung.
Chung Myung dug out soil, pried loose stones, and smashed boulders apart with his bare fists, driving deeper and deeper into the ground.
His rough, ragged breathing strangely sounded like sobbing.
He kept digging, and digging, until he was covered in dirt from head to toe. Grinding his teeth, as if this were the only mission left in the world, Chung Myung’s hand suddenly froze rigid.
Something else had snagged at his fingertips beneath the soil.
Nothing was caught at the end of the fingers that had pierced the dirt. That meant there was emptiness beyond this point.
Chung Myung’s breathing quickened.
“……”
Now he began carefully clearing away the soil. His touch was completely different from before—delicate, cautious.
Watching him, the Mount Hua disciples’ eyes widened.
A cave?
They couldn’t tell exactly what it was.
But one thing was certain: in the place Chung Myung was uncovering, there was enough space for a person to enter.
Before long, Chung Myung swayed and stepped inside.
“...Sasuk.”
At Yoon Jong’s murmur, Baek Cheon nodded.
“...Let’s go see.”
Baek Cheon led the way, bending low toward the cave Chung Myung had entered.
It was a narrow, cramped passage, but beyond it lay a surprisingly spacious area. Baek Cheon dropped lightly down and lifted his head, letting the sight before him sink into his eyes.
Chung Myung...
In that instant, Baek Cheon was perhaps a little shocked.
Chung Myung’s small shoulders—shoulders so small they looked as though they might collapse at any moment—were trembling violently, unable to contain his emotions.
What lay beyond those shoulders was...
A person? No. The thing seated there in full lotus position was not a person, but a skeleton.
A skeleton reduced to nothing but bone, yet still preserving the posture it had held in life. The cloth draped over it had crumbled and aged so much that its original shape was impossible to guess.
And yet they could tell.
For on the finely even stone wall behind the skeleton—smoothed as though refined by inner energy—grand characters had been carved as if with a finger.
A sigh slipped from Baek Cheon’s mouth.
Though my body sleeps here,
my heart remains with distant Mount Hua.
Mount Hua Sect 13th Generation Disciple, Cheong Jin.
“Ah...”
A trembling hand reached out and, with utmost care, caressed the engraved words. The shoulders started shaking uncontrollably.
“Ah... ah...”
At last, a smothered sob burst from Chung Myung’s mouth as he collapsed there as if his strength had given out entirely. Baek Cheon closed his eyes slowly, unable to bear how painful that cry sounded.