Yu Chong (4)
An attack by an assassin whose motive no one could fathom — and that alone was more than enough to throw everything around us into an uproar.
And the target was me, of all people. Someone had tried to kill me — the General-in-Chief of the Han Empire and husband to the Empress herself, no less.
Honestly, the attempt itself didn't stir much in me; I'd survived plenty of them by now, so it barely registered. That wasn't the problem. However dim my political instincts might be, I wasn't so oblivious as to miss what kind of fallout this incident would drag in. At the very least, I could count on shock and terror slamming into the imperial court hard enough to send Luoyang itself spinning twice through the air.
A strange and absurd metaphor, I'll admit, but I couldn't find a better way to put this situation into words.
I turned my gaze to Seo Yeo, who stood at my side with her vigilance wound up to its absolute limit.
"..."
With her eyes flicking warily in every direction, Seo Yeo was the very image of a human turret. You know the type — one of those terrifying things out of video games that guns down anything wandering into its range. That was Seo Yeo exactly. Anyone reckless enough to approach me uninvited was not going to have a good time.
I watched her like that for a while before speaking up.
"Seo Yeo."
"...Yes, my lord."
"You spared him on purpose, didn't you?"
True, she'd sent the man flying with a sound like a bomb going off against a human body, but even that much, I could tell, had been Seo Yeo holding back. A little more strength behind the kick, or her point of impact shifted from torso to head, and the assassin would have died without so much as a whimper. A body crushed to pulp or a head burst open — either would have been more than enough to kill a man. Just as the assassin had hurled himself bare-handed at my throat, so Seo Yeo was more than capable of killing without a weapon.
"..."
At my question, Seo Yeo turned her head toward me. Expressionless as ever. That I could see through that blank mask and read her feelings at all never ceased to amaze me.
"That is correct."
Just as I'd expected, she answered exactly along the lines I'd predicted.
"Uncovering whoever stands behind him matters more than killing him here and now."
"..."
"I did grow angry without meaning to, and put more force into it than I intended... Thankfully, he proved sturdier than expected."
Sturdier than expected. She could say something downright terrifying without batting an eye. Hearing it, I had no choice but to ask:
"And if there is no mastermind? If it was his own doing, alone?"
A while back, a few members of the Dong Zhuo household I'd taken in had tried to assassinate me, after all. Seo Yeo had slipped out of the room first that time as well, facing them down herself — though in the end it was Dong Bai who floored the assassin first.
"That would change nothing."
"Why not?"
"Sending someone off with a single painless stroke would be far too merciful, would it not?"
...Ahh. What a terrifying reason.
She was usually so quiet that I'd never noticed, but Seo Yeo and Her Majesty were very much the same breed. Toward anyone they judged an enemy, both showed an exceptionally rough and cruel touch, if that was the way to put it. There was Her Majesty, who had once asked me with a perfectly straight face whether my taste ran to tearing prisoners apart or boiling them; and here was Seo Yeo, deeming a clean single-stroke death too merciful and preferring to grant something far more painful.
...They really do need to live long, long lives. If I died in some unforeseen accident and those two lost their brakes, I honestly couldn't imagine what would happen.
Meanwhile, what had become of the assassin chase? Lü Bu had supposedly found him, yet after the bomb-like blasts echoing around the area, things had gone strangely quiet... Don't tell me he'd actually died?
Fwoooosh—!
"Huh?"
THUD—!
Almost before the thought had finished forming, Lü Bu came soaring in through the window, Sky Piercer Halberd in hand. That gave me a start. She showed up like some kind of ninja. The way she slipped in and out of that tiny window as she pleased never failed to astonish me.
"Gyauu—!"
Yeo Hwa, nestled in my arms, flashed a delighted grin at the sight of her mother, as if the whole entrance were the funniest thing in the world.
"Aboo-waah!"
"Huh? What is it, my precious baby... No, wait — is she okay?! She's still okay, right?!"
Lü Bu, who had answered her daughter's call almost purely on instinct, snapped back to her senses in a flash and closed the distance in a hurry.
"..."
Having watched Lü Bu for many long years and knowing perfectly well that she was an ally, Seo Yeo didn't particularly move to stop her. Had it been anyone who failed to meet her standards, she would likely have leveled the Chu Heaven Sword at them with terrifying menace instead.
I gave Lü Bu an amused smile.
"You've gone and become a full-fledged mother, huh?"
"Of course I have! Do you have any idea how hard I worked for it! ...No, I mean — is she okay or not?!"
"She's fine. Not a scratch on her, so don't worry."
I showed Lü Bu Yeo Hwa, freshly changed into dry clothes by her mother and snug as could be. "See? If anything had happened, would she be lying this comfortably?"
"Baow!"
Yeo Hwa clearly hadn't understood a word of the conversation, but she agreed with me wholeheartedly all the same. Aigoo, what an adorable little thing. Whose daughter could she possibly be, to be this cute?
"Mmm... I suppose so?"
Lü Bu bobbed her head at that.
Seo Hui was quiet to an almost eerie degree, and Guan Ping was sociable and hardly ever cried. Unlike those two, who were nothing like your average baby, Yeo Hwa had precisely the temperament that sprang to mind at the very word baby: she cried when something bothered her, cried to be picked up the instant she saw her parents, cried whenever a stranger came near... Perfectly standard behavior, as babies went. As for Cao Ang... hmm... I hadn't observed her long enough to render a verdict. The one thing I could say for certain was that she possessed an astonishingly gentle nature — so much so that it was hard to believe she was the child of Cao Cao, who killed without a shred of hesitation. Considering how Cao Pi, Cao Cao's successor in the original history, needlessly took after his father's temperament and ran rampant with every manner of misdeed, it was a truly remarkable turn of events.
"Isn't she this sweet precisely because she takes after her father?"
"...You mean me?"
"That's right. Children take after their parents, after all."
That was what Cao Cao had said, stroking Cao Ang with the softest of touches.
"Her looks take after me, and her conduct after you — how could she be anything but the fruit of our love?"
"Aboo-boo."
"Hehe. Adorable, isn't she."
The way she'd looked at me with those besotted eyes while saying it was, frankly, embarrassing. If love had blinded her, it had blinded her completely. And if her words held true, then all I could do was hope that the Cao Pi who would one day be born wouldn't turn out to be some psychopath with a rotten personality. ...Not that guiding one's children away from exactly that fate wasn't a parent's job in the first place.
Watching Lü Bu play with Yeo Hwa, the baby gripping her mother's finger tight, I asked:
"What happened to the assassin? You didn't kill him, did you?"
"Hah, who do you take me for?! You think I'd let some two-bit punk like that slip away?"
Lü Bu answered in a supremely confident voice. Shouting that with her finger held hostage in a baby's grip — the contrast was pretty hilarious.
"He did give me a good scare when he suddenly tried to kill himself, though!"
Suicide, of all things. Fitting for an assassin, perhaps — the man didn't seem all that attached to his own life.
"Tsk. What on earth kind of training did they put him through, for a man with a sword to get knocked out by bare hands?"
"..."
"If he goes back, he's dead meat."
If anything, didn't that speak to how formidable the assassin was? He'd taken a blow from Seo Yeo — reined in though it was — and still gone on to subdue soldiers afterward. No telling why a man like that had been languishing under Yuan Shu of all people. My condolences to the soldiers who, by meeting the wrong opponent, now had hellish training in their future.
"Gyauu."
"Anyway! I did put more muscle into it than I meant to, but the catch was a success!"
So Lü Bu, like Seo Yeo, had struck harder than she intended. Something on him had to be thoroughly smashed by now. At this point, the man's abilities deserved recognition: the patience to wait years for the chance to approach his target, the composure to stay calm with his goal within arm's reach, the audacity to toss away his own life, and even the superb physique and skill that assassination demanded. Fitting for the man who, in the original history, had assassinated both Yu Chong and Luo Jun in a single stroke. That such an assassin actually existed was genuinely astonishing.
"So where is this assassin now?"
"Uh... the soldiers should be bringing him over, all tied up with rope, any minute now," said Lü Bu, sweeping her gaze around the area.
"Oh, there he is."
"Hm?"
I turned my head in the direction she was pointing — beyond the door that Seo Yeo had first shattered by kicking the assassin through it and then finished off by hurling a couch after him, now hanging in perfect tatters.
"..."
The assassin, bound tight in rope from head to toe, was being dragged along like a bale of cargo, unconscious. Why on earth had they wrapped him up all the way to the tips of his toes? He looked for all the world like a caterpillar.
"G-General-in-Chief!"
"Good work."
"Thank you, sir!"
Having offered a word of thanks to the soldier who had transported(?) the assassin over, I stared down at the rope-wrapped caterpillar before me. Eyes closed in perfect serenity, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth — he looked so convincingly like a corpse that I couldn't help asking:
"You're absolutely sure he's not dead?"
"H-he's fine! I swear I didn't kill him!"
Lü Bu studied the assassin for a moment, then added:
"...Probably."
The fact that she couldn't say so with any certainty was already a problem in itself. Well... at this point, dying might actually be the lucky outcome for him. After all, compared to having Her Majesty the Empress personally put the pot on to boil him, dying from a beating would be positively merciful, wouldn't it? At least, that was how I saw it.