I'll Be Waiting
"I'll wait."
"You love me?"
Cheon Hwi's voice, laid low, was no different from usual — a little playful at the edges, with a peculiar sagacity steeped into it.
Hyeon and Seol felt their fingertips tremble.
We can't be found out. Not now....
If they were found out now, everything would collapse. What good was it for a disciple to love her master as a man, when Cheon Hwi did not love his disciples that way?
From ancient times, people had warned against spending the word love too freely. Lean on a moment like this and tell him they loved him, and he would file Hyeon's heart away as family affection. The instant that word grew cheap, it lost its true meaning.
They had meant to draw toward him slowly, let him catch even a glimpse of what they felt, and only then press it upon him in earnest. Caught now, every plan would be ruined. And if they said instead that they loved him as family, whatever future might have remained would vanish with it.
The disciples were still agonizing over how to weather the crisis when the one who broke the silence was, of all people, Cheon Hwi.
"Yes. I love you as well."
What?
Love, settled this easily?
"Then, Master, you don't mean...."
Yes. Count the past life with this one, and they had been left to steep for decades. By now the rice hadn't cooked into a meal so much as boiled itself down to porridge. Surely, surely he understood!
The disciples looked up, hope bright in their faces, and Cheon Hwi smiled as if the sun had come out.
Damn it all. Of course.
They had known it would be like this. If he were the sort of man to topple at a single line, they would never have agonized so bitterly in the first place.
Why did people clutch at empty hope, and then despair of their own accord?
The disciples' faces darkened in an instant. Whether Cheon Hwi failed to notice or simply would not, he went on.
"A disciple may love her master. I am grateful that you love me."
"......"
"There have been hard days. But my disciples regard me as a parent, and your memories have returned. A glad day indeed."
He smiled, very gently. That gentleness had nothing at all to do with what his disciples had meant.
"Do they not say that master and disciple are as parent and child?"
At those words the color drained from Hyeon's face. Seol's eyelids trembled.
"To hold so tender a heart toward one who is master and parent alike — it is nothing beyond understanding."
No. That wasn't it. Any one of them meant to say so, and not one of them could.
"I will accept that heart."
Cheon Hwi set a hand upon each disciple's head and stroked their hair, exactly as a man soothes a child.
She had envied it so fiercely whenever he stroked Seol's hair — so why, why did his hand have to come down now of all moments?
Hyeon's eyes grew wet. They might have passed for tears of being moved. What they held was not that. It was devastation.
"Set your hearts at ease now. Your feelings have reached me well."
He looked at his disciples and, inwardly, took himself to task.
Yes. The children must have been lonely all this while. I have been too indifferent.
Enough, he told himself. He would hold his place as their master more firmly, so the children would have someone to lean on.
"More pressing than that — we are in the midst of a practical examination, yet the man we were to escort has colluded with the demonic faction. Let us report him to the Academy."
"...Yes, Master."
"...Mm."
The disciples answered with nothing but yes. Give themselves over to this anger and this grief, speak the feeling as it truly was, and the bond of master and disciple would snap along with it.
"I will take that one. Make ready."
With those few words he left them, to prepare the unconscious caravan master for the road.
The back that turned and walked away looked far too broad. The warmth toward them showing in that back was unbearably galling. And unbearably dear.
Master. Someday....
No one let the words leave her mouth.
Never noticing their eyes on him, Cheon Hwi murmured to himself.
"That my disciples should rely on me so. A true blessing."
He did not yet know that the blessing would soon become obsession. He did not yet know that the obsession would weigh, and weigh heavily, on the rest of his life. The Cheon Hwi of this moment still did not know.
In the very moment he meant to ready the caravan master and go, Cheon Hwi turned his back and stepped outside — and the patience the disciples had been choking down broke all at once.
Hyeon lifted her head and looked straight at Seol.
"...Seol. Let's say you've recovered your memories too."
You are comforted, for the sorrow of a past life, by the very bond of that past life, and you fall in love. Was that not a cliché novels used until it was threadbare?
The plan required the other disciples to be gathered, and Hyeon knew Cheon Hwi's remaining disciples were at this Academy as well.
I've only been at the Academy a year. The whole student body is too much to ask, but I know the names of the ones in my own faculty.
One of the remaining disciples had come out of the same swordsmanship faculty. The other was famous even inside the Academy....
So — gather the disciples and comfort him together?
As if. Have I lost my mind? Add more rivals?
Judging by the memories of her past life, the two disciples besides herself and Seol nursed an obsession every bit as formidable. A little regrettable, yes. Better, even so, that it be only the two of them dating Master, and warring between themselves for the place of his lawful wife.
It was in that spirit that she had asked. Seol refused.
"I refuse."
"What? Why?!"
Had she not felt it — that there was no hope in this, not right now? This was Cheon Hwi, a man who could hear I love you and still sort it neatly under family.
"You are a disciple. I am a senior. Love with a disciple is impossible. Love with a senior is not."
Seol was entirely serious. The words could have passed for a joke, but her eyes were resolute, and the traces of a complicated calculation lay intact inside them.
Hyeon was struck speechless.
"...Th-that's sophistry."
"If we are not master and disciple, what taboo is there between a man and a woman?"
"...You are Master's disciple!"
"That was me, in my past life. Not now."
Seol's eyes glittered, and she smiled, small.
Hyeon flinched and took a step back.
"You... don't tell me you did it on purpose. Even after you got your memories back, telling me to keep calling you senior...."
"Mm. Master only has to not see me as a disciple."
Hyeon's brows jumped as if the shock had physically struck her.
"So the act of not having recovered your memories...."
"......"
Seol let silence stand in for yes. Her gaze did not waver, and there was even a coldness in it that resembled Cheon Hwi.
"You think that makes any sense?"
"I'll make it make sense. If I mean to win, the shackles of disciple come off first."
She said it quietly, and without room for argument.
"You wear the name of disciple like a token. I have been his disciple straight through from a past life, so he has to love me. That isn't a weapon. It's a shackle. Inside that line, Cheon Hwi will never look at you as a woman."
"......"
Hyeon had nothing left to say. The justification she had been holding up — the bond of a past life — seemed to collapse all at once.
"So, Seol... you got your memories back, and you simply didn't say. On purpose?"
"Mm."
"And you still won't tell him?"
"Mm. I won't. You go on being loved as a disciple. I'll be the lover."
Seol smiled, softly. Inside that soft smile was a declaration of war, fought over love.
Hyeon clenched both hands. Out of a heart that felt as if it were caving in, resolve rose again, the kind that gathers itself back together.
"Fine. If that's how you're going to play it... I won't sit still either."
The contest of spirit between the disciples would not have paled beside the momentum of hunting the Heavenly Demon.
Cecilia, who had watched all of it, thought:
I... feel as if I've been pulled into something enormous...?
Turn it over as she might, this did not seem like a matter that would proceed in any normal fashion.
Mm... still, they aren't bad people. It'll be all right, won't it?
There are many ways to answer a fear of the future. Of all those ways, Cecilia chose avoidance. Not one person there knew that the choice would, in a future not far off, be paid for in pain — whether at the disciples' hands, or at Cheon Hwi's. Not even Cecilia herself, who had made it.
Not long after the disciples' fight — no, their resolve — had ended, Cheon Hwi came back out, dragging the still-unconscious caravan master along as if by the collar.
"Are you ready?"
"Yes."
Their voices were bright, nothing like a moment before.
"Brighter than you were just now. Did something happen?"
"We've decided which way we ought to go."
What they meant was that they had decided how, exactly, they meant to court Cheon Hwi.
"To have set the course of your future is a good thing. I commend you."
Had he taken it for nothing more than his disciples choosing a path? Knowing nothing of what they intended, he simply praised them.
"Thank you, Master."
"It is nothing. Before that — do you remember the Lightness Skill?"
"The Lightness Skill?"
The one who echoed him in doubt was Cecilia.
"Come to think of it, I never did explain it to you."
This world had no such thing as a Lightness Skill to begin with. She would never have heard the name. And when I brought her with me, there had been no time to explain.
"I shall explain while we have the chance. A Lightness Skill is...."
I gave her a rough account and tried to teach her. And yet.
"Why in the world can you not do it...?"
"......"
However short Cecilia was on qi, she had wrapped herself in holy power, and holy power was a kind of energy too. There was no chance I would fail to recognize that much. In theory, it ought to work.
"Is this right?"
"Yes. Seol, you do it well."
Look at that. Seol, who had not regained the memories of her past life, managed it from a single sentence. Was Cecilia's talent simply a little lacking?
"Yes. Such things happen. I will explain once more, so listen carefully."
"Yes...."
"Mantle your legs in qi — no. In holy power."
"I have."
"Now circulate that holy power through the meridians. Think of it as adjusting your center of balance — or as gathering strength in the feet, and pushing their spring to the limit."
"Yes...?"
What did she mean, yes? I was the one who wanted to ask. Why couldn't she do it?
"Yes. It is about time you learned the Lightness Skill."
"How does one do it, Master?"
"Wrap qi around your feet, and run."
"...Like this?"
"Just so. You are my disciples indeed."
My disciples had done it the moment I told them to wrap qi around their feet and run. If I had been teaching Cecilia something on the order of Void-Treading Steps, or the Shifting of Form and Place, I could have understood her failing. Failing even the Grass Floating Skill made no sense at all.
At this rate we will not manage it in a day.
"I will carry Cecilia."
"Thank y—"
"You can't!"
"No."
...Why was the opposition this fierce? Did they think I would do something indecent to her? Disciples, doubting their master....
"You went to the pleasure house again?!"
"That friend of mine insisted...."
"Master, everyone knows perfectly well you don't have any friends."
"......"
I could see why they wouldn't trust me.
"Then — can the two of you use the Lightness Skill while carrying another person?"
In my past life I would not even have wondered. Now, though, neither their internal energy nor their technique could be familiar yet. Was it possible?
"We can."
"I can do it just fine."
Each of them answered as if she had no doubt of herself.
Hm. Yes. The caravan master had to come as well, and leaving this to them would do no great harm.
"Then... Hyeon, you bring Cecilia. Stay right at my side, in case."
"Yes!"
Going by the memories of my past life, Hyeon had the greater stability, and the finer precision.
But why does Seol look like that...?
It hardly mattered. Her pride was only a little stung at not being the one acknowledged. So I concluded, and Hyeon went straight to Cecilia.
"...Cecilia. Excuse me, just for a moment."
"The favor is mine."
The words were barely finished before Hyeon slipped an arm gently around Cecilia's waist. Cecilia's body sank into her embrace.
"Hyeon. You must not hold her too tightly."
I said it as advice. Hyeon answered with nothing but a small smile.
"Don't worry, Master. I won't break her."
"...Hm?"
"Yes?"
"Ah — it's nothing."
Cecilia tilted her head, as if she must have misheard. Hyeon did not explain.
Is... this really going to be all right?
Hyeon looked at her as a rival. There was no world in which that was reassuring.
Even if I insist a little — if Lord Cheon Hwi were the one holding me....
For the sake of her own safety, Cecilia gave it serious thought.
I'd better go quietly....
The aftermath, once they reached the Academy, frightened her more. She decided to entrust herself to Hyeon without a fuss.
"Good. We go. All of you, follow me."
I said it as I hauled the caravan master along.
"Yes, Master."
"Mm."
At their master's word the disciples answered as one, called up the Lightness Skill, and started back toward the Academy.
But behind those light steps a clinging, deep resolve had taken root. If it was a love their master would not permit, then they would make it so he had no choice but to permit it.
And the only one who came to see all of it — slowly, but surely — was Cecilia.
Held in Hyeon's arms, she swallowed a very small sigh.
...Why do I have the feeling the Academy is about to become very loud?
On the road that would vanish beneath the disciples' Lightness Skill, an irreversible crack was already opening.