This Is My Role (5)
Without a word, Beop Jeong descended Mount Hua, then suddenly looked back over his shoulder.
At that terrifying gaze, Beop Gye could not help shrinking his neck.
“……Mount Hua.”
This was not at all how he had felt when he climbed this road. There had certainly been an unpleasant discomfort, but in the end he had never doubted that he would leave with what he wanted.
To him, Mount Hua had been something like a wolf that only he could tame.
For ordinary people, a wolf was an object of fear. But to the one capable of taming it, it was nothing more than a dog with sharp teeth.
And yet the dog he had thought he had broken in was now baring its fangs at him, as though it had never lost the wildness of its days running through the fields.
“The Buddha showed compassion to all beings.”
“…….”
“But there was one race to whom he did not extend mercy. Do you know what that race was?”
“I’m not sure, sir.”
“Mara.”
Beop Gye opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. Beop Jeong went on.
“In the end, it means the Buddha himself distinguished between beings that could be saved and beings that could not. To those that could bring nothing but harm and could not be redeemed, he was more severe than anyone else.”
With a hardened expression, Beop Jeong glared at the halls of Mount Hua in the distance.
“At the very least, I had thought Mount Hua was not the devil. It seems I was wrong.”
“……Bangjang.”
Beop Jeong bit his lip.
Beop Gye looked at him with faintly puzzled eyes. It seemed as though Beop Jeong had just remembered something.
“……In the end…….”
“Pardon?”
“No.”
Beop Jeong shook his head.
“The Yangtze comes first. I will settle that matter first. Mount Hua comes after. But…….”
Then he snapped coldly, “One day, Mount Hua will also have to pay the price for this. Setting aside my personal feelings, they turned away from a matter that would throw the whole world into suffering and cast Shaolin’s name into the mud. I will make them pay that price.”
“That is only right, Bangjang.”
Crack.
The prayer beads in Beop Jeong’s hand shattered and spilled down in a shower of fragments.
The beads rolling free from the snapped thread seemed to explain the relationship between Shaolin and Mount Hua at this very moment. Things that had been joined by nothing more than a single slender strand had now been severed.
“Mount Hua Sword Hero…….”
Beop Jeong gritted his teeth and took a step forward.
“This is your choice.”
After Beop Jeong left, the main figures of Mount Hua gathered once more in the Sect Leader’s quarters.
And among those important figures, Hye Yeon sat there with great dignity. Looking at those clear, bright eyes, everyone felt a natural swell of pride.
“Everyone…… thank you so much.”
“Don’t mention it, Monk.”
“We’re not strangers or anything. It’s nothing.”
“Please don’t mind it.”
A slightly bashful, radiant smile bloomed on Hye Yeon’s face.
He had turned his back on Shaolin, the home that had once been like a family to him. And yet he felt no grief welling up in his chest, because these people were here. These people, who had become another family, different from Shaolin yet just as warm.
Right. This is where I belong…….
“You’re smiling?”
“…….”
But.
Unfortunately, within that heartwarming atmosphere, there was one person who absolutely did not smile.
A demon who looked as though he had just crawled up from hell fixed Hye Yeon with a blade-like stare. Terrifying madness glittered in those eyes. Hye Yeon instinctively shrank his neck.
“You think this is funny?”
“……D-disciple. I-I…….”
“What, you little shit?”
As Chung Myung’s face grew redder and redder, Hye Yeon slowly backed away.
“Hey.”
“Y-yes?”
“Are you screwing with me?”
“W-what are you talking about…….”
“That’s it!”
At last, Chung Myung leaped at Hye Yeon and drove both feet straight into his chest.
Bang!
“Aaaagh!”
Struck dead-on by the sudden attack, Hye Yeon rolled across the corner of the room. Even then, unable to vent his fury, Chung Myung lunged after him with murderous enthusiasm. Everyone turned pale and rushed to pry him away.
“W-what is wrong with you? Chung Myung!”
“Calm down first!”
“Someone get me some candy, now!”
If the word candy came out of the Mount Hua Five Swords’ mouths, it meant the situation was serious indeed. The panicking disciples of Mount Hua joined forces with the Five Swords to pin Chung Myung down.
But even as they held him, Chung Myung was clawing at the floor like a rabid dog, growling at Hye Yeon.
“Let go! You not gonna let go? I’m gonna watch that bald bastard grow hair on his head today!”
“What kind of nonsense is that?!”
“No!”
Chung Myung screamed, fire practically shooting from his eyes.
“If you were gonna chase that abbot out on your own, you should’ve stayed quietly in the corner! What the hell did you follow him out for and make trouble for yourself, huh?!”
Flinch.
Hye Yeon lowered his head deeply.
“This is screwing me over, that’s what this is! Hey! Do you have some kind of grudge against Mount Hua? What, you want Shaolin and Mount Hua to crash into each other and both die? After all these years of feeding you and giving you a place to sleep, you’re gonna repay kindness with betrayal? Fine! Today I’m gonna repay you right back! Ah, let go of me already!”
“P-please, calm down!”
Baek Cheon, feeling with terrifying certainty that the moment he let go of this arm Chung Myung would really beat Hye Yeon until he was pulp, clung on even more desperately.
Protecting Hye Yeon, of all people, sounded ridiculous enough, but the one he was holding was one of the very few people who could make that ridiculous idea feel entirely plausible.
“What? A monk? A monk, you say?! Hey, you little punk!”
“Ack!”
Since he was being restrained and couldn’t kick properly, Chung Myung stretched his legs out as far as they would go and slapped Hye Yeon’s shaved head with the soles of his feet.
“If the Buddha saw you, He’d say you were hopeless and smash your head with a Bodhi tree branch! You’ve got every possible kind of talent for causing trouble, don’t you?! You followed him out? Followed him? If somebody offered you a single piece of candy, you’d get kidnapped by a trafficker and still be grinning and chanting Amitabha!”
“No! I told you to calm down!”
“Sect Leader! Please, do something! Sect Leader…….”
Yoon Jong turned toward Hyun Jong for help, but flinched at once. Hyun Jong was muttering to himself with an expression that looked half-mad already.
“Shaolin and…… of all things Shaolin…… I must have gone insane, to think of Shaolin…….”
“…….”
Yoon Jong whispered to Baek Cheon in a low voice.
“Martial Uncle. I think the one over there is worse off.”
“Close your eyes.”
“……Yes, sir.”
After thrashing around and struggling for quite a while, Chung Myung seemed to cool down a little; the tension in his muscles gradually began to ease.
“Ever since we took in that damned monk, nothing has gone right! What are you going to do about this, you little shit?”
Tears streamed down Hye Yeon’s face.
Honestly, from his point of view, wasn’t this unfair? He had only said he would accept expulsion and told them not to interfere, and then this guy had gone off on his own, chased Beop Jeong away, and now was chewing him out for it.
This was the same as yanking someone out of the water, smacking them across the face for being in the water in the first place, and then stealing their bundle while they were still gasping for breath.
That wasn’t robbery. That was robbery.
“Chung Myung. You said Shaolin wasn’t a big deal?”
Baek Cheon’s head snapped around. The moment he saw that horrific look in Chung Myung’s eyes, he yelped and hurriedly turned away.
“When it comes to fighting, you can say anything! What, is Shaolin some kind of children’s academy? Not a big deal? Of course it’s a big deal!”
“……I only said that because that’s how you made it sound.”
“Agh. I really do have the worst luck.”
Chung Myung ground his teeth.
That bastard’s temper, seriously.
Poor Monk Hye Yeon.
He really does blame everyone else for everything.
Truthfully, even if nothing had happened with Hye Yeon, the relationship between Mount Hua and Shaolin had already been strained to the point of collapse from the moment Beop Jeong stormed out of here.
Hye Yeon’s matter had merely driven a wedge deeper into that situation.
“Tch.”
Chung Myung seemed to understand that much too, because he stopped there. If nothing else, there was something impressive about someone who could stop only after going this far, even knowing it.
“Shaolin and…… Shaolin. What do we do now? Now? Shaolin…….”
But while Chung Myung’s anger may have cooled, Hyun Jong’s soul, which had already left his body, showed no sign of returning.
Chung Myung cleared his throat softly, then began trying to soothe him.
“Well, for now, just calm down a little.”
“Calm down?”
“…….”
“Do I look like I can calm down, you idiot?”
The next instant, Hyun Jong charged at Chung Myung faster than anyone had ever seen him move before and seized him by the earlobe.
“Aaaagh! Sect Leader! My ear! My ear hurts! My ear!”
“You insane bastard, you actually drew a weapon on Shaolin’s abbot? You ran off the moment I looked away and made things even worse, and now what? Hye Yeon? You damn fool! Is this Hye Yeon’s fault? This is all your fault!”
“Ack! My ear, my ear! It’s coming off! Aaagh!”
“Oh, ancestors above……! What sin have I committed that I must be burdened with this sort of creature…….”
- Sorry.
“Huh?”
He could have sworn he heard something…….
“Aaaagh!”
At last, Chung Myung managed to tear free and bolt to the corner of the room. There he shouted back with veins standing out in his neck.
“Then what was I supposed to do?! Those bastards were acting like they were going to cut off the bald monk’s head!”
“……No one said we were going to cut off his head. Just the tendons and veins…….”
“Cutting off the head would’ve been better. If he can’t use martial arts, he’s just a fool! What are you even supposed to do with a guy who can’t use martial arts? He’s worse than a stray dog!”
“…….”
What truly saddened Hye Yeon was not Chung Myung’s words. It was the others from Mount Hua, who reflexively nodded the second he finished speaking.
Tears welled in his tightly shut eyes.
These terrible people…….
I was the idiot for getting moved for even a moment. Me.
“Going to war with Shaolin…… Shaolin…… Ancestors above. I’ve ruined everything. Now Mount Hua is doomed…….”
“Hey! Don’t say such unlucky things! A hundred years ago, Mount Hua was almost at the point of exchanging blows with Shaolin too, and it didn’t collapse, did it?”
At that, Hyun Jong looked at Chung Myung with a dazed expression.
“……A hundred years ago?”
“Yes!”
“A hundred years ago?”
“I’m telling you, yes!”
“……Then it really did collapse, didn’t it?”
“Huh?”
What?
……Come to think of it, that was true.
For a moment Chung Myung was rendered speechless, and Hyun Jong slowly sank down into his seat.
“What are we to do about this…… what are we to do…….”
“Ahem.”
Seeing that, Hyun Sang said carefully, “If you had been so worried, you might have resolved it in a more gentle way…….”
“How am I supposed to resolve it gently in that kind of atmosphere, you fool!”
“How are you supposed to make peace with those Shaolin bastards at all!”
Though their directions were clearly different, the two of them were not all that far apart in what they were doing.
Before long, even the Sect Leader had been colored by Chung Myung. Quite badly, too.
The faces of the Mount Hua disciples darkened all at once.
“……Mount Hua is doomed now.”
“What do you mean doomed? Nothing’s doomed. I’m here!”
“…….”
Hyun Jong stared blankly at Chung Myung, then let out a deep sigh.
“We’re really doomed.”
“Hey, what the hell, old man?”
“Sect Leader, you bastard!”
The instant Chung Myung glared, Baek Cheon rushed in and kicked him hard.
Chung Myung rolled into the corner and sprang back up.
“No, I’m saying there’s nothing to worry about! Those Shaolin bastards aren’t a big deal!”
“You said just now they were a big deal.”
“I said they’re not a big deal if I’m the one dealing with them.”
“……Try to keep it to two meanings per mouthful, Chung Myung.”
How could one mouth produce so many different answers? Anyone watching would think rainbows were blooming out of it.
There was Chung Myung, shouting at the top of his lungs without a trace of fatigue; Hyun Jong, who had gone slack-jawed and was muttering to himself; Hye Yeon, hunched in the corner and looking utterly miserable; and the Mount Hua disciples, each of whom had something different to say.
Crunch.
Hong Dae-gwang, who had somehow taken a seat here in the middle of all this, could not possibly join the atmosphere. He merely tucked himself into a corner as if he were not there at all and chewed on a pancake.
“……This is a damn mess.”
Still, in a way.
It was a scene that felt very much like Mount Hua.
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