Saving the Frail Junior Sister (1)

Skin so white it looked bloodless, lips a vivid red, and hair black as ebony falling all the way to her waist.

She was so frail that the mere sight of her set every protective instinct blazing. This was my junior martial sister, Ok Seolhwa.

Didn't she look just like the heroine? The only difference was that this one seemed a little more demure.

I had seen the heroine's face on the novel's cover and thought, yes, pretty enough—but the girl standing in front of me was a beauty of another order entirely. Maybe it was the way celebrities look ordinary in photographs and leave your mouth hanging open in person. Or maybe, now that I had become a character in the story, my eyes had simply grown rose-tinted.

"Cough, cough... Senior Brother, have you caught a cough?"

Her bronchial tubes had never been sound, and still she was out on the training ground, coughing as she worked. Snow lay thick on her hair. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠She must have been at her training since dawn.

If I remembered her right, there was only one way to handle this.

"It's bitter cold today. Why don't you rest, Junior Sister?"

"Cough... I couldn't. You train whether the day is hot or cold, Senior Brother. How could I rest?"

That diligence, stacked upon diligence, was the very thing wearing her body down.

"Then I can rest too, can't I?"

"What? But you've never rested. Not even once."

You... were you that kind of character?

Not the sort of genius who grows stronger while loafing about, the way she must have looked to the protagonist, but the sort who grinds away where no one can see? Then I would have to grind just as hard if I wanted to become as strong as the original. I didn't care for that at all.

"Even so, one day won't hurt."

Whether she had seen through me or not, Seolhwa's face clouded, and her hand tightened on her sword.

"You don't have to go out of your way on my account..."

No. I just don't want to do it.

"Cough, cough..."

I was doing my best to hold my tongue, but the longer I watched her—the cough that would not stop, the hands gone cold, the shivering that said a chill had taken hold—the more certain I became that if I did not get her indoors this instant, something terrible would follow.

Catch pneumonia in an age like this, and there won't even be medicine for it.

That settled it. I would have to intervene.

"When Master is away, the senior brother stands in his place. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes, Senior Brother. But..."

"So today, we rest. Don't you remember the teaching? Rest is part of training."

"I-is that so? I never received much of Master's instruction..."

"Then today we'll make it indoor training instead."

As I said it, I caught Seolhwa's hand. I could not tell how far her temperature had fallen. The hand trembled in mine, and sweat cooling on her skin had her whole body shivering as if the chill were climbing through her. I needed her in her room, and I needed her there now.

Even after we were inside, the brazier was dead—she had been training since before dawn—so I struck flint, nursed a flame, and fanned it until the heat began, slowly, to rise.

If this place had an ondol, I could lay her on a heated floor and roast the cold right out of her.

But this world had no heated stone floors. Cross far enough east, into Korea or some country that had inherited the idea, and there might be one. I could hardly install one on the spot.

"But Senior Brother, couldn't I do just a little more? I haven't finished the training set for today..."

Good grief. Why are you this stubbornly diligent?

The sigh came first. If I meant to keep this junior sister alive, though, I would have to persuade her quietly.

"Do twice as much tomorrow. I'll help you, so stop worrying."

"I wouldn't be imposing on you, would I...?"

You dying would be a far bigger imposition.

Unlike Yeon Cheongha, I did not think her death would leave me unable even to use the sect's martial arts. I would grieve. I would regret it. I was not, however, enough of a bastard to watch a girl this frail die in front of me and look the other way.

"Just warm yourself for a little while, Junior Sister."

"Once I'm warm... may I go back out to the training ground?"

"Tsk!"

I narrowed my eyes at her, and only then did she settle, meekly warming her hands over the brazier. Time bought, if only a little.

A brazier alone won't be enough.

I set a kettle over the coals, put water on to boil, and started a pot of hot tea. Then I stepped outside, gathered stones from where they lay scattered on the mountain, and washed them clean.

"Agh! Damn it! It's freezing out here!"

The moment I plunged my hands into the ice water, they began to shake, and my fingers went numb. What else was I supposed to do? This was not a world with a hot-water boiler.

If you're going to drop me into someone's body, at least make it one that doesn't feel heat or cold! I'm still a kid, my realm is pathetic, and here I am shivering myself half to death, raising all this fuss just to save a single person!

I scrubbed the washed stones dry against my clothes and went back into her room.

Hm? Did she fall asleep?

She had curled in on herself beside the brazier and drifted off. Training since dawn had left her cold through ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and through; even with the fire on her, she was still shivering.

I spread a thick quilt over the floor, lifted her onto it, and shoved the stones I had gone to such trouble to wash into the brazier until they were good and hot. Then I wrapped them in cloth and laid them over her hands, her thighs, her feet, her chest, her stomach, and her head.

"There. She ought to be all right now."

A moment ago her lips had been turning blue, and the shivering had not stopped. Once the heated stones were on her, the chills eased, and she slept with her eyes peacefully shut.

"Nngh..."

I had washed stones in ice water and burned my hand reaching into the brazier, but all things considered, I had gotten off cheap.

In case she woke halfway and tried to slip outside, I took a bamboo slip set aside for her studies, scrawled a warning across it in charcoal, and left it by her pillow.

The original owner of this body, Yeon Cheongha, had been a celebrated calligrapher. Unfortunately, the one inside it was me. I knew the characters. Writing them so they looked like his was another matter. The hand was the worst of the worst.

"That should do it."

Easy at last, I left her room, watched the snow come down soft and steady, and threw a punch.

The fist went out as naturally as if the body were not mine at all. Each time I swung an arm, my torso swayed as though it were dancing. These were still the steps of a boy who had not finished growing, and yet I cleared three meters in a single bound—one zhang, by the measure of this world—and flew across the snow.

The formulas of the martial art rose on their own, the way a hook from some song sticks in your head after you hear it half-asleep. I drove my breath along with them and set the hot inner energy gathering in my lower abdomen into motion.

Shwaa—!

Like a great fan sweeping snow aside, every step I took onto the training ground flung the drifts in every direction. Only after I had danced through a full set did the body seem satisfied. My hands opened, and I stopped where I stood.

"...Well, look at that. I really am a genius."

Pleased with the flesh I was wearing, I smiled and let the snow fall on me—snow so clean you could never taste the like of it back in a world choking on polluted air.

"Achoo!"

And then I caught a cold. Damn it.

Ok Cheonung.

Father of Ok Seolhwa, and master of Yeon Cheongha. He had left his young disciple and his ailing daughter behind and taken to the road for one reason only: to find a precious medicine that might cure Seolhwa's illness.

From his dwelling in Gansu he had crossed all the way into Sichuan, and there he found the thousand-year snow ginseng said to have come up for sale. To buy it, he had gone to Tang ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Bunyeon, the Eight-Poison Witch of the Sichuan Tang Clan, knelt until his knees met the floor, and wrung a concession out of her.

His daughter had been born at eight months, and the physicians had shaken their heads, saying a constitution like hers would not live long. To Cheonung she was the only blood he had left in the world, and she was everything.

He had thrown away wealth and glory alike to live in hardship with her, and with a page boy fit to help look after her. That page, taken on for no greater purpose than tending a sick child, had proved to possess a genius and a bone structure no one had expected, and so Cheonung had gained a disciple into the bargain.

Against every prediction that she would not see her eighth year, he had kept her alive. Whenever her vitality failed, he poured his true internal energy into her—true-origin qi, until the well of it ran dry—by the art of transfusing qi from his own body into hers. Because of that, she had reached sixteen this year, clinging, however desperately, to her lifeline.

Even so, watching her waste away by degrees had filled him with dread, and he could feel how little of his own energy remained. It was then that word of the snow ginseng reached him. He bowed his head to kin, called in every old connection he had, and begged like a dog, and what he brought home from all of that was this root.

And yet... why am I so uneasy?

Perhaps Cheonung already knew.

That it was already too late for his daughter. That the moment his energy ran so dry he could no longer force his qi into her, the lifespan he had held in place by sheer will would end with it.

So even with the snow ginseng in his hands—the very thing that might restore her strength—he could not properly call on his lightness skill. He climbed the mountain panting, the way an ordinary man climbs.

He could not give up all the same. Cheonung was a father.

Why was a mountain path that had been nothing at all, back when his inner energy was whole, so steep now, and so cruel?

He had reached the foot of the mountain early in the morning. Only after the night had gone deep did he arrive at his own dwelling.

A Deep Mountain Valley, where people were scarce and not even the cry of a beast could be heard. Only one sound lived there.

"Ugh... hkk... hkk..."

A boy, sobbing.

The sound is coming from Seolhwa's quarters... and this voice... Cheongha? Cheongha, weeping like this...!

Cheonung wrung strength out of legs that would not stop shaking, wrung what he could from a withered dantian, and flew like lightning toward the room the crying came from. There was only one reason his trustworthy disciple would make a sound like that. Tears burst from him as he flung the door wide.

In the end, I was too late! Forgive this worthless father...

"Seolhwa! Seolhwa! Your father is here!"

Inside, a shape lay buried under a quilt to the very crown of the head. The instant he saw it, the strength left his legs, and he folded to the floor.

Clatter, roll...

The snow ginseng he had carried as if it were his own life, still wrapped in cloth, tumbled from his hand and rolled across the floor. He clutched his face, and the scream was already rising in his throat.

"Seolhwa!"

"Fath— no, Master...!"

"Yes, Seolhwa, Father's he— hm?"

The small voice had not come from in front of him. It had come from behind. Cheonung's head snapped around.

There stood Seolhwa. Aside from cheeks a little flushed by the cold outside, she looked perfectly well, staring in bewilderment at her father collapsed on the floor of her own room. Eyes wet, Cheonung looked from her to the shape bulging beneath the quilt.

For a heartbeat he wondered whether his daughter's soul had come to meet him even after death. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠His sense of qi said otherwise. The Seolhwa before him was a little weak, but she was unmistakably alive.

"Uuuuugh..."

And the place that sobbing moan was coming from was her quarters—from inside the quilt.

He drew the quilt back. There lay Cheongha, face burning, shivering where he lay.

"Why are you in here?"

"Urhh—ah—urrrgh..."

The boy was too far gone to form a word, weeping in a delirium. Looking at him, Cheonung sat down as if every last scrap of strength had left him.

"Haa..."

He was not too late.

He had brought back, in time, the precious medicine that would save his daughter.

In the fate that should have been, he would have failed to arrive when it mattered. He would have passed the snow ginseng to his disciple, drawn up the last of his true-origin qi so Cheongha could absorb the root, and then—his internal energy spent—died before much longer.

A single day of nursing had changed that fate.

Auuugh... my head is killing me, somebody put the quilt back ooover me!!

In his place, it was his disciple who looked ready to die.