The Face Beneath the Hood
A few hours had passed since Dang Seol-yeong and Kaisent set out.
"It's getting dark… We should make camp…"
"Yes…! Haaah~~"
The moment Dang Seol-yeong suggested they rest, Kaisent dropped straight to the ground and let out a long, sighing breath. Even with magic lightening his steps, his frail stamina made prolonged travel a real struggle.
"Wait here… I'll gather firewood…"
"Um… could I just come with you?"
"Aren't you tired…?"
"I-I'm fine, really! Just a little!"
Kaisent had no desire to be left alone in a forest that was darkening by the minute. He would rather push himself harder than stay behind. She, for her part, had been nursing the same quiet worry, so she agreed to let him come along.
As the two of them collected branches of a suitable size, the spare moments of the task opened room for more personal conversation.
"Hey, Noona."
"……"
"Noona?"
"Hm? Sorry…"
Dang Seol-yeong, who had been gathering wood while keeping a wary eye on their surroundings, answered a beat late. But her delay was not only from vigilance. Until now, no one had ever called her Noona.
Kaisent asked her carefully.
"Why do you wrap yourself up so tightly, Noona? Doesn't it feel stuffy?"
"…To contain the poison qi…"
"But earlier, when I tried to get close, you said you could control it. If you can hold it back on your own, do you really need to dress that heavily?"
"……"
He was right. She could rein in her poison qi whenever she wished, and so long as no one pressed right up against her bare skin, dealing with people posed no great problem. Even so, she had no intention of shedding the clothes that bound her body from head to toe.
Had her experience talking with others been anywhere near ordinary, she might have offered some convenient excuse. But her contact with people had been so scarce that she simply did not know how to answer, and so she closed her mouth.
An awkward silence settled in. Kaisent sensed she had no wish to continue the subject and let the matter drop.
She seems like a good noona, but she doesn't have much confidence.
Kaisent himself lacked confidence, which made it easy to recognize a kindred spirit. Had Dang Seol-yeong been a man, he would have fallen silent right there. But once he realized she was a noona with a gentle air about her, he pressed on.
"You probably can't imagine it, Noona, but I've seen all kinds of appearances. I've met… people with water-blister things stuck all over their bodies. People with different eyes, people with no nose—anyway, I've seen a huge variety of folks. I don't know why you cover yourself, but if you're worse off than any of them, I'll stop talking."
"……"
Sensing the sincerity in his voice, Dang Seol-yeong seemed to turn something over in her mind, wordlessly gathering firewood all the while. Faced with her lack of response, Kaisent made no further demands and simply collected wood in silence.
Once they had enough, the two of them found a suitable spot and lit a fire.
"…Are you… sure…?"
"Pardon?"
As the fire crackled and warmed the air around them, Dang Seol-yeong murmured something under her breath.
"If you see what I look like… can you promise you won't be shocked…?"
"Y-yes! Of course!"
"……"
Drawing courage from his answer, she resolved to show him the face that had made so many people frown.
She pushed back the deep hood, and the first thing to spill free was her plain, unadorned hair, falling long. Her eyes tilted gently downward, giving her a soft, mild look. Her face was slender, her skin smooth and fine as ivory—perhaps from years spent sheltered from light beneath that hood. Her eyes were clear and deep, free of any cloudiness, and her pure, refined air carried the quiet elegance of a noble house.
Then he understood why she had hidden herself.
What struck him first was the green tint in the whites of her eyes, and the veins of her face, likewise stained green. Her lips were a blend of soft pink and pale green, and against that fine ivory skin the green of her veins stood out all the more sharply.
Raised from childhood by the Dang Clan on a diet of poisons, she had been forged into a poison master—and the side effect had turned her blood itself into a green, toxic substance. With her veins and the whites of her eyes glowing that ominous green, most people, outsiders and clan members alike, flinched at the sight of her.
"……"
Kaisent stared at her with his mouth hanging open like a fool. She, already carrying a negative view of her own looks, took the boy's expression for the worst—
"You're beautiful……"
"……?"
For the first time, she doubted her own ears.
"Especially your eyes. They're like unique jewels. They're incredibly pretty."
"…Are you serious…?"
"Of course I am. Aside from my big sisters, I've never seen anyone as pretty as you, Noona."
Honestly speaking, by cosmic standards there were plenty of people as beautiful as Dang Seol-yeong—or more so. But most of them had altered their faces one way or another. Raised among natural beauties, Kaisent had developed a quiet aversion to any woman who had so much as touched her face with cosmetic work.
"…My veins are green, though…? Doesn't it bother you that my blood isn't red…?"
"There are people with blue blood, you know."
"Blue… blood…?"
"And others with white, yellow, orange, pink—all sorts."
"……"
Just where had Kaisent lived, that such peculiar people were common? Whatever the reason, he was the first person ever to look at her appearance and be surprised in a good way. The dark thoughts she held about herself felt, if only a little, lighter.
"Noona. When other people are around, fine—but when it's just me, please don't cover your face."
Stranded on a remote planet and already suffering, Kaisent pleaded with desperate earnestness. If he could not at least enjoy the view, he was not sure he could endure it.
"…Okay… I will…"
"Yes!"
Watching him cheer so adorably, Dang Seol-yeong felt a fondness take root—and with it, a new desire to protect this child. The old her might have felt fondness, but never the urge to guard someone. The current of the moment was so natural, though, that she arrived at that conclusion without even realizing it.
"Come to think of it, you mentioned sisters earlier… How many people are in your family…?"
"Hmm~ Dad, and nine moms. Fifteen older sisters, eight older brothers, eleven younger sisters, and nine younger brothers. And there's Kunlo—he's Dad's disciple. He's looked after us since we were little, so he's basically another big brother."
"……"
"Oh, right. And Dad sensed that a wife who died a long time ago has been reborn, so he left on a journey with the moms to find her. So soon I'll have ten moms."
"……"
For the first time, Dang Seol-yeong found herself unable to process what she was hearing; her mind went blank. She had expected a large family when he said sisters, but nothing on this scale. And he was off searching for a reborn former wife? Had Kaisent's father transcended even the boundary between life and death?
If the boy was telling the truth, his father was practically a god.
She sat there floundering, unsure how much of it to accept. Kaisent noticed and offered no further explanation, quietly closing his mouth.
In any case, the goodwill he had shown toward her appearance had broken down the wall between them, and their relationship grew a little warmer.
"Mmh……"
In the middle of their back-and-forth, Kaisent—who had spent so much of his strength during the day—began to blink, the strength draining from his neck. Exhaustion was catching up to him.
He doesn't look like he's ever done anything rough. Can he handle sleeping rough like this?
Camping was not as simple as just lying down and sleeping. Without even a tent to keep out wind and rain, the situation was worse still. If the fragile-looking Kaisent slept exposed to the night dew, he could easily catch a cold.
"Just a moment……"
Growing drowsy, Kaisent began setting up one of the spells he had learned that day—an alarm ward—around their campsite. Small, gloomy sticks topped with skulls materialized one by one.
"What is this…?"
"Um… it's a little complicated to explain, but… I learned it from a book that was inside the clothes of an old man who tried to kill me before I met you."
"Someone tried to kill you?"
"Yes…… Mingming saved me, though."
"Who is Mingming…?"
"Mingming, say hello."
At the drowsy Kaisent's command, Mingming—who had been camouflaged against the nape of his neck—popped out and formed a little hand-shape, waving it gently.
"!?"
"And those are alarm wards from the book. I don't know how effective they are, but if anything strange shows up, Mingming will let us know. Mingming—sleeping bag."
On command, Mingming stretched out from his camouflaged position at Kaisent's nape and wrapped around the boy's body, transforming into a sleeping bag. The change would cost some energy, but since it was not the violent motion of combat, the drain was negligible.
"I'd like to do the same for you, Noona, but you said getting close is dangerous because of the poison qi……"
"It's fine… These clothes work for camping too…"
"That's a relief…… Then… I'm going to sleep……"
Kaisent lay down in a suitable spot. With Mingming-as-sleeping-bag trapping his body heat inside, he drifted off warm and comfortable. To a stranger it would have looked as though some grotesque lump of flesh were devouring him, but he seemed entirely used to it. He might well have been expected to toss and turn in an unfamiliar environment—yet he paid such things no mind at all.
"……"
Dang Seol-yeong stared blankly at the peacefully sleeping Kaisent, still trying to settle her own bewilderment.
Even the world of the immortals would probably seem less strange than wherever this child comes from.
Part of her wanted to ask about the place he lived. But even these fragmentary scraps of information had left her so unsettled that a deeper exchange might warp her entire worldview. Fear of the unknown held her back.
That aside, I still have no sense of how long we'll be wandering this forest. For now it's fine, but…
If the delicate Kaisent kept moving through these woods for any great length of time, something was bound to go wrong eventually.
While we still have room to spare, maybe I should train him in some self-defense arts?
Had they been stranded in a region she knew, she would never have thought of it. But this was territory unfamiliar to both of them, and she could not even say whether a village existed nearby. The story of the old man who attacked Kaisent still bothered her a little—but given how sudden the assault had been, she judged him another castaway like themselves, someone who had lashed out in the shock of a sudden change.
There's no telling how much longer we'll be in this forest. In the worst case, we may have to live here until we die.
Mingming, that strange life-form, was helping Kaisent—but for the sake of the boy's own stamina and health, at least some basic training was necessary. She decided she would ask his opinion once morning came, then leaned her back against a tree and closed her eyes.
What a strange feeling. I never thought I'd be able to sleep beside someone.
Most of the missions the Dang Clan had assigned her were solo affairs. Even when she moved with others, she had always been required to keep a fixed distance, which made it little different from traveling alone. But simply eating and sleeping alongside this cute boy who relied on her and followed her—for the first time, she could feel the warmth of another person.
The air had changed.
The forest had not. The earth had not. Nothing had changed—except the air itself, in a strangely altered state. Every living thing in the woods began to move more cautiously in the face of this sudden shift in their environment. Aside from the occasional hunt of some unfamiliar foreign creature, the native life of the forest no longer fought among itself.
"Huh? Self-defense arts?"
Once Kaisent had woken and cleared his head with a drink of water, Dang Seol-yeong told him she would train him. After she explained her reasoning, he thought for a moment, then spoke with visible reluctance.
"I… um… I don't like fighting people……"
"Why…?"
"Because I'm scared……"
It was true—beyond his slender build, Kaisent carried an air of fragile nerves.
"Then what if it isn't fighting—just training your body…?"
"If it's that, then okay."
Ordinarily he would have refused this kind of training outright. He had rejected his father's training for the same reason. But Kaisent, too, had been quietly fretting over how vast this forest might be and whether people even lived here at all—so he accepted the proposal. Roughly half of that acceptance, of course, was the selfish wish to grow closer to Dang Seol-yeong.
"First… may I take your hand…?"
"Why?"
"I want to send true qi through you and examine your body…"
Understanding the reason, Kaisent held out his arm. She reined in her poison qi, then sent true qi through her gloves to inspect his meridians and energy points. The older a person grew, the more waste accumulated in the meridians; checking them before teaching martial arts—to estimate how quickly someone could learn—was common sense.
"!!"
The moment she finished examining him, Dang Seol-yeong's eyes flew wide with shock she could not suppress.
W-what is this? There's not a scrap of waste in his meridians. And every energy point is open—wider than mine, even?
If this body learned even the most basic martial arts, the results would be extraordinary.
"Euk!?"
As she probed a little deeper, she discovered a vast quantity of internal energy sleeping inside Kaisent's body—astonishingly pure, and so vigorous it seemed ready to erupt at any moment.
More astonishing still: the lower dantian in his abdomen, the middle dantian at his heart, and the upper dantian at his crown all held internal energy—and that energy simply existed within the dantians. It was not being used to strengthen his physical body at all.
If he could draw on even a fraction of it, she could not begin to imagine the power he would wield.
"Noona?"
"…Kaisent. Have you… learned a separate internal energy cultivation method…?"
"Yes. Dad taught me one thing he said I absolutely had to practice. Wait—you know about internal energy cultivation methods too, Noona?"
If Kaisent was not lying, his father had clearly reached a realm no one in the entire history of the murim had ever attained. A heart method taught by such a parent for his child's sake could be no ordinary art.
"Kaisent."
"Y-yes?"
Dang Seol-yeong took hold of both his shoulders and, with a gravity she had never shown before, applied a little pressure.
"Listen carefully to what I'm about to say."
In place of her usual soft, trailing speech came a firm voice and a weight of presence that left Kaisent unable even to answer.
"If anyone asks you to teach them your cultivation method, never tell them. Not until you're old enough to judge for yourself and stand on your own. Never give in to someone else's demand. Do you understand?"
"…Yes. I absolutely won't tell anyone."
Faced with a warning given so sincerely for his sake, Kaisent nodded and promised he would keep his cultivation method secret.
Confirming that he had taken her seriously, she started to withdraw her hands—only for Kaisent to catch her gloved ones.
"Thank you, Noona. Being here is hard, but meeting you makes me feel lucky."
"……"
Looking at the smile of the boy who held her hands and thanked her, Dang Seol-yeong barely managed to keep the blood from rushing to her face.
Th-this is dangerous… If he smiles that close…
Had her self-control been even a little thinner, she would have wanted to pull him into her arms on the spot—he was that cute, that lovable.
"…Ahem. Well then—first fill your stomach with those nutrient blocks, or whatever they're called, and then we'll begin self-defense training…"
"Yes!"
"Euk……"
At the sight of the boy answering with a bright, full smile, Dang Seol-yeong learned a new truth: when cuteness reaches its absolute limit, it becomes a weapon all its own.