Bing Province (3)
A night black as pitch, without a single star. A ramshackle old house on the verge of collapse. A man wailing as he clutched a baby to his chest, beside a woman who lay with her eyes closed, never to open them again. It was the day one life was taken and another was born — and the memory of that day sank deep into the mind of the girl who had been that baby.
In a place where even a handful of food was precious, conflict was inevitable. No one wants to die. Everyone wanted to live, and to live, they had no choice but to fight over what little there was. From without, foreign tribes and bandits came to burn and plunder. The officials sworn to protect the people had rotted through — they ignored them entirely and hauled away nothing but crushing taxes. Word had it that the young master whom the Governor of Bing Province treasured like gold and jade had lately thrown himself into subjugation campaigns and even cut this region's taxes, but to the people of a slum already sunk into the abyss, it was a story that had nothing to do with them.
Here, people took what they wanted by violence, and when even that was not enough, they did not hesitate to murder. In this place, where only creatures closer to beasts than to men still remained, the man fought tooth and nail to survive. Born with a body that nature itself had favored, he had at least adapted to this godforsaken place faster than most. Move in silence, and no one noticed him. Run in earnest, and no one could catch him. And when a fight became unavoidable, that inborn strength let him flatten whoever stood against him.
Yes. In this slum where nothing but beasts remained, he had been the strongest beast of all.
...And perhaps that was the problem. He had made far too many enemies, and in the end, the lone beast was caught off guard by the weak beasts he had only ever looked down on. Wandering the slum for food as he always did, the man realized, at some point, that he was surrounded.
How many had there been? He couldn't say. Somewhere past the first hundred, all he could do was give himself over to the fight.
"You son of a bitch! How long did you think you could keep living however the hell you pleased?!"
A man with a vicious, sneering face had driven a knife into the man's chest, and stood there snickering.
"..."
He had fought back with everything he had, and this was how it ended. With his free hand, the man seized the face of the one who had stabbed him and hoisted him clean off the ground.
"Gyaaaaaaargh!"
Krrrunch!
At the sight of a man's face being crushed by sheer grip alone, the few who still remained of the mob broke into cold sweat and stumbled backward.
Crack!
At last, with the sound of shattering bone, the man whose face had been caught in that grip crumpled to the ground. Hurling the limp body aside, he advanced slowly on the crowd that was staring at him in horror. A knife was buried in his chest, angled toward his heart — and still the man showed nothing at all.
Seized by terror, the mob scattered, shrieking, in every direction.
"..."
The man watched them flee for a moment, then turned on his heel and headed for home. It was too soon for him to die. There were still things he had to tell that child.
Having lost his companion, the man somehow managed to raise the girl who had been a baby. With her wrapped snug against his chest in a sling, he flitted about the slum, stealing anything and everything. As the years passed and the girl grew, he pressed the same warnings on her, over and over, inside the house that was their only refuge. The outside world was dangerous — she must never go out. She must let no one through the door. And even if he stayed away a long, long while, she must not worry.
After that, the man left the girl at home and roamed the world outside alone. And every time, he came back with something new cradled in his arms. Usually it was food, but now and then he brought toys that looked like fun — his small kindness for a girl who had to wait for him all by herself. Her belly went hungry often, and she owned next to nothing, but the girl was happy. She could feel, every day, that she was loved.
Right up until the day she saw him come home soaked in blood, dreadfully wounded.
"...!"
The man collapsed the moment he stepped inside, and the girl caught him on instinct before he could touch the ground, holding him up in her arms. Nor did she stop there: without the least difficulty, she moved him and laid him out on the bedding. A girl who had only just turned ten had caught a full-grown man as he fell, supported him, and laid him down with ease. It was a sight that defied all sense — yet the man lying there only smiled, quiet and faint.
Kneeling at his side, where he drew thin, threadlike breaths that seemed ready to snap at any moment, the girl asked:
"...Who did this to you?"
At the sight of the girl — who so rarely opened her mouth — speaking, the man answered plainly.
"All my life, I stole from others. Took what was theirs. Some of them must have died. All of that has simply come back to me."
"..."
"My daughter. All this time, I never told you your name. Do you know why?"
Establish oneself in the world, and make one's name resound.
The man had talent enough to have done exactly that. Had he entered official service and fed his family by it, none of this would ever have come to pass. But it was impossible. As long as the empire that ruled this continent bore the name of Han, it could never be — for the man's family was remembered by that empire as a name out of nightmares. Rising in the world was never even a question; he lived in dread of the day the imperial army might come crashing through the door to drag them off and put them to death.
And yet — who could say? If he had cast aside the family name, taken a new one, and entered service, perhaps he would never have been found out. But he did not. No — he could not. He was afraid. How many times had he dreamed of the family that had fled for centuries being exposed through his own carelessness and exterminated at last? He dreamed of the one treasure left in all the world — the last of its kind — dying. Even now, with death before his eyes, the man did not regret the way he had lived.
"What you do, once you hear it, is yours to decide. Shake all the world with that name if you wish — or live out your days in quiet hiding. Either is fine."
He felt the girl's presence, watching him still.
"But I would have you bury this name in your memory alone, and take another. If that name ever rings out across this empire, all the world will come to hunt you down."
The child who, at birth, had not cried — who had only gazed at her mother, dead beside her.
"Ten years since I laid your mother to rest. What a long, long road it has been."
A child who, at so tender an age, already bore talent that would not yield an inch even to his own.
"There were moments when your mother rose up in my memory unbidden, and the grief nearly broke me — but you were here, and so I held on...."
Gazing into eyes that were dimming by the moment, the girl said nothing at all.
"You are my beloved daughter, and my pride...."
——Xiang Ji.
Having breathed his daughter's name, quiet and unadorned, the man breathed his last.
The girl built her father's grave in the plot beside her mother's, near the house. The work itself did not wear her body down — but the grief that kept surging up from somewhere deep inside was nearly more than she could bear.
"Well, well. Looks like that monster of a bastard really did die."
At the sneering voice behind her, the girl stopped what she was doing and turned. Roughly ten men were strolling toward her, grinning their crooked grins.
"Never would've guessed he had a daughter, though. A man who could barely keep himself alive — didn't figure he had the luxury of raising a brat, too."
The girl knew it instinctively. These were some of the men who had killed her father.
"Been a while since we touched some real money. Of course, we'll have our fun with her first — before we sell her off."
Several grown men, coming to do violence to her. Any ordinary girl would have run for her life.
"If you want someone to curse, don't curse us. Curse your old man — he's the one who made so many enemies."
And yet, somehow — somehow, the girl did not believe she would lose.
Taking her revenge was easy. She dealt with every man who came rushing at her, beating them down until they would never rise again; one she left half-conscious and deliberately released — and sure enough, he came back, bringing his friends with him. So she beat them all down until they could not rise, let one go, and repeated the pattern. Three rounds of that, and releasing one brought no one new to her door. Afterward, she went and found the last one she had spared, and made him just like all the rest.
Once word of all this spread, people in the slum began calling her a monster. The girl looked down at her hands. Traces of dried blood still clung to them here and there; she had not washed them. She washed them at once, then sank down before her parents' graves and wrapped her arms around her knees.
The food her father had stockpiled was already gone.
——All my life, I stole from others. Took what was theirs. Some of them must have died. All of that has simply come back to me.
Whenever she reached for what belonged to someone else, her father's words rose up in her mind, and she found she could not bring herself to take it.
"..."
The only family who had ever loved her was gone from this world. And all that remained around her now were people who shunned her, whispering that she was a monster.
"...What am I... supposed to do now?"
She was still far, far too young to be deciding anything. And so one day passed, and then two, and on the third day—
"Hey, little one."
A young man approached the girl, who still sat frozen in the very same posture, like a stone statue. Paying no heed whatsoever to her gaunt, wretched state, he held out his hand to her.
"Want to come with me?"
"..."
At that gently spoken question, the girl found herself, without meaning to, reaching out and taking his hand. Even as he drew her away, she turned back for one last look at her parents' graves. A wind that had brushed past the graves came and stroked the girl softly on its way by.
She could not have said why, but it was a very warm wind.