Sparring (5)
The duel between Seo Yeo and Zhang Fei ended the way Seo Yeo's duels with Lü Bu always did: with Zhang Fei, stamina spent dry, conceding first. The spectators who had gathered to watch drifted back to wherever home was for each of them once it was over.
Zhang Fei was still heaving for breath, stringing words together seeming to be a struggle in itself.
"Seriously... you're on a completely different level..."
If she differed from Lü Bu in any one respect, it was that Zhang Fei had truly driven herself to the very brink of collapse — a far cry from Lü Bu, who would call off a spar the moment she started feeling tired.
I walked over to Zhang Fei, who sat slumped on the bare ground with her serpent spear flung haphazardly nearby, and spoke to her.
"Was there some reason you pushed yourself that far?"
"Ah... that? It's nothing, really."
Zhang Fei looked up at me, her blood-red eyes a shade paler than Lü Bu's.
"Partly I just got caught up in the moment, and..."
"......"
"Besides, didn't somebody say chances like this don't come around often? That I should fight with everything I've got so I'd have no regrets?"
So she'd run herself into the ground just on my say-so?
She really does take me at my word, doesn't she.
Hearing her answer, I asked again.
"Good. So did you fight without regrets?"
"Yeah. Haven't been this worn out since I was a little kid."
With that, Zhang Fei pushed herself up from where she sat.
"Nnngghh... Yeah, I'm not gonna be able to move a muscle tomorrow..."
She winced faintly, apparently already dreading the soreness that awaited her. Scooping up the serpent spear sprawled any old way across the ground, Zhang Fei looked at me.
"So, um... thanks for putting up with my pestering."
I answered her thanks with an easy expression.
"It wasn't really pestering, so don't dwell on it."
I'd had fun too, after all.
At my answer, Zhang Fei nodded slowly, then turned her gaze toward Lü Bu, who had settled in beside me.
"......"
"......"
The instant Lü Bu and Zhang Fei's eyes met, the pair lit the twin fires of their glares as if on instinct now, each fixing the other with a murderous look.
These two genuinely can't manage to get along, can they.
"Tch."
"Hmph."
Still — perhaps because the memory of my apology just before was fresh — the two confined themselves to glaring their displeasure, showing no further signs of action.
Right. It ending at glaring is already something. As long as they don't actually come to blows, it should be fine.
Zhang Fei held her contest of wills with Lü Bu for a while, then turned her eyes back to me.
"...Then let's do this again sometime."
"Sure."
Farewell said, Zhang Fei set off toward Liu Bei and Guan Yu, who had been waiting for her — and she'd barely drawn near Guan Yu before opening her mouth.
"Well, Yunchang, sis? Jealous, aren't you?"
"Hmm..."
Guan Yu could not deny the abrupt question; she only let a low hum rumble out.
"You said you wanted to cross blades with her too, didn't you? So what are you gonna do?"
"...Should another chance present itself, I too would beg a bout..."
Zhang Fei and Guan Yu traded talk fearsome enough to befit the women who'd claim the number two and number three spots for martial might in any Romance of the Three Kingdoms game. These human weapons, it seemed, were enormously fond of honing their martial arts.
Just then, Liu Bei, who had been watching Zhang Fei, spoke with a smile touching her lips.
"You mustn't make too much of a nuisance of yourself, now."
"Of course not! Just leave it all to me!"
For all the world as though trust were hers by right, Zhang Fei struck a triumphant pose. Watching her, Liu Bei murmured under her breath.
"...I'm not sure I can..."
"......"
They got along staggeringly well, sworn sisters through and through. The Peach Garden sisters traded chatter as they slowly walked away, and I, who had been watching them go, turned my gaze elsewhere.
"......?"
When my gaze came to rest on her, Seo Yeo seemed to sprout a question mark above her head, as if to ask what was the matter. Watching her tilt her head a barely perceptible degree to one side, I smiled.
"You're not hurt anywhere, are you?"
"...No."
I stepped right up and looked Seo Yeo over, this way and that. Despite having driven that match-for-ten-thousand Zhang Fei all the way to total exhaustion, Seo Yeo's breathing had not so much as wavered once through the entire bout. And while Zhang Fei had hurled her body about so violently that dust and grime had caked her from head to toe, Seo Yeo remained, even after the duel, every bit as fresh and spotless as when she'd begun.
Not one bead of sweat to be found, and all the while she had pressed Zhang Fei relentlessly from start to finish. And even then she had deliberately declined to end the bout, humoring her opponent right up until Zhang Fei dropped where she stood. Just as Zhang Fei herself had said — there was a very good reason to call her a different level altogether.
Sultan Saladin, hero of Islam, founder of the Ayyubid dynasty — do you know him? There once lived a man who, watching that very Saladin's painstakingly solid front line cleaved apart by a single warrior, passed judgment upon him: what in the hell kind of satan-spawn demon bastard is that? Richard the Lionheart.
And yet even that King of England, Richard the Lionheart, left behind records of falling ill, of being taken captive, of being wounded. Even that human weapon, lavishly praised by Saladin as a satan-spawn demon bastard, eventually met his end when an arrow wound festered.
Xiang Yu, though? Not one such record exists. No record of illness, no record of captivity, no record of grave injury. And the reason that terrifying man died? His spirit simply wore itself away, bit by bit, until he took his own life.
He charged, on foot and utterly alone, into a unit of five thousand elite cavalry under Liu Bang's general Guan Ying, butchered several hundred of them single-handed — and when not a single man dared rush at him, declared that he would "grant them one last grace" and killed himself on the spot.
And these records aren't even embellished. The deeds of a defeated man are ordinarily shrunk by the victor's pen, yet the Han dynasty — founded by Liu Bang, Xiang Yu's sworn nemesis — describes him in precisely those terms. Historians have pored over the chronicles of other nations, cross-checking them again and again, to see whether the accounts had been puffed up to glorify the man. And through that cross-verification, the historians arrive at a single conclusion: this guy was the genuine article.
Had it not been for Xiang Yu's flaws of character, Liu Bang and everyone else would have been smashed to pieces long before, and the Han dynasty would never have existed at all.
The more I think about it, the more it boggles me. How does a human like that even come to be born? Is he even human?
Anyway — the person I'd most like to ask whether we're even the same species was standing right in front of me.
"......"
Just then, Seo Yeo, who had been meeting my eyes, went faintly red and let her gaze slip aside. Apparently I'd been staring at her for quite a while, sunk deep in my own thoughts.
I reached out, caught the embarrassed Seo Yeo's cheek in hand, and kneaded it this way and that. An addictive feel, as always.
When I took hold of her cheek, Seo Yeo, who had glanced away, turned to face me again. If Seo Yeo put her mind to it this instant, I'd be sliced down the middle — Jeong on one side, reung on the other — and I'd become a jeongreung in the most literal sense. A royal tomb, that is. Come to think of it, she wouldn't even need the Chu Heaven Sword; she could probably just reach out with a bare hand and snap my neck.
But I knew she never would, and so I felt no particular fear.
"Thank you. For always protecting me."
"...Yes."
It was because Seo Yeo had always stood guard at my side that I was still breathing. This world is far too harsh on a weakling like me. Normally, a person who drops into a world like this arrives with one overwhelming talent or another — so why not me? Back in Bing Province, fearsome men and women alike would come lunging for my life at the slightest provocation, and without Seo Yeo I would certainly have died.
Sometimes as foreign tribesfolk, sometimes as bandits, this world had threatened my neck again and again. I owed Seo Yeo my life so many times over that I'd long since lost count.
Lü Bu, for her part, was forever galloping along the front lines, and so many of her days were spent far from my side — and in the first place, her name carried such weight that while she lingered anywhere near me, no one so much as attempted anything. Seo Yeo, by contrast, prized my safety above all else and passed up even the chances at glory that came her way, which was why she remained comparatively unknown. Back then she hadn't yet carried on her back the monstrous greatsword that now crushes the fighting spirit of anyone who so much as glimpses it — all the more reason for the bastards to come charging. Even now, within our own faction, nothing but speculative rumor circulated that she simply had to be leagues beyond Lü Bu.
Honestly, the reason I could wander about in a half-daze, as though I'd caught some incurable case of safety-blindness, owed a great deal to Seo Yeo's existence. When you know you won't die no matter what you do, boldness just comes naturally.
I smiled and spoke to her.
"I'll be counting on you going forward, too."
"......"
At my words, Seo Yeo gave a calm nod. Just then, Lü Bu, who had been watching the whole scene, blurted out:
"Do you have to have a heart-to-heart that serious while you're still holding her cheek?"
"...Fair point."
I'd done it as a means of holding Seo Yeo's attention, but I'd kept hold of her without even realizing.
Not my fault. The fault lies with Seo Yeo, whose cheek is far too squeezably soft.
Thus reasoning, I nodded along and released her cheek. Even in that instant, Seo Yeo's expression stayed perfectly placid.
"And, Lü Bu — you held yourself back just now instead of fighting. Well done."
I praised Lü Bu for locking a contest of glares with Zhang Fei without letting it turn into an actual fight.
"...And what if you go and apologize again?"
"I wouldn't mind."
"That's not the point."
Having received my praise, Lü Bu muttered on with a faintly sullen look.
"I'm mad at myself."
"Hm? Why are you mad?"
When I asked her back, Lü Bu went red to the ears and whipped her head away.
"Ugh, forget it! I'm not telling!"
Why on earth had she gone and sulked all of a sudden?
I studied Lü Bu, utterly failing to comprehend, then set my steps toward Ma Chao, who was waiting nearby. Before I knew it, the sun had already begun its drowsy, unhurried descent toward evening.