The Backseat Blood Demon
After the full examination, Rachel promised to become my personal physician. From where I stood, it was not a bad offer.
This damned body came burdened with an absurd list of restrictions, but set those aside and it was, against all expectation, a healthy constitution. Which meant, put another way, that apart from being free of disease, everything else about it was, without a single exception, the absolute worst...!
"This is... a human body?"
The way it had gone mad over fried food like a toddler, the way it had lost every last game of baduk and dragged Manoe's honor through the mud, the humiliating acts it had committed for one bite of crispy tonkatsu — all of it, every last bit of it. Every single thing...!
In the end, it was all this body's fault...!
Sea-ah and Rachel had made the offer out of concern for my health, but my true purpose was, above all else, to unravel the secrets of this flesh. After all, everything I knew about this body still lingered in the realm of guesswork; not one thing had been established for certain.
How much could this world's technology really uncover about a form supposedly wrought by the stars of the heavens themselves...? Half expectation, half doubt. The results would take a few days, so all that remained was to wait, cradling that faint hope.
A few days. Merely a few days? For Bonjwa — who had already readapted to modern life to perfection — a wait of a few days was one I could endure without the slightest strain!
Bonjwa stared at the eternal companion I had acquired upon returning home — the secondhand computer Sea-ah used to use — and let out a wicked cackle.
"Hahahaha... khak, khak! Kek, khek! Hahahahahah! Games alone would melt a few days away in no—"
"Oh, right, big brother. You've done nothing but play games all day, every day, lately. I'll give you your allowance back, but games are banned for a while."
"Melt away, mel... huh?"
"And for the record, baduk counts as a game too. That ridiculous excuse isn't going to fly anymore."
"Sob... hnn..."
"And this time, no amount of crying gets it repealed."
"Eh?"
Bonjwa — the Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin — froze with knees bent, mid-motion, ready to roll across the floor like a gimbap slipping off its platter.
...Ahem. This wretched body. The instant it heard it could not play games or baduk for a few days, it had immediately tried to burst into tears and throw a tantrum. But since this was always how it went, Bonjwa — boundlessly magnanimous — graciously resolved to forgive it, just this once. Anyone deprived of games for days might well react that way. Bonjwa, naturally, was nothing of the sort.
I brushed off my knees with both hands, then strode into the room and hammered my fist against the desk with hearty vigor, every inch the dashing hero righting a great wrong.
Bam! Bam-bam-bam!
Banned from baduk, of all things — where in Bonjwa's flawless logic could a single crack have existed?!
In the end, I concluded that I would need a new hobby until Sea-ah's gaming ban was lifted. The allowance ban had been rescinded, so it seemed only right to spend my pocket money on something other than delivery food.
And so, after a long deliberation over what would serve best...
"...Gal! Cheonma, you treacherous fiend!"
Bonjwa — the Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin — who had decided to spend the allowance on web novels, felt rage boiling up past all containment.
Cheonma, the Heavenly Demon! In the bustle of readjusting to the modern world I had briefly forgotten, but what was the first cause of my ending up with this cursed body? Was it not Cheonma, who created and spread the demonic arts for no reason other than to kick away the very ladder he had climbed first? The moment those arts were proven incapable of reaching transcendence, he had to vanish in a fountain of blood before the very eyes of the Sword Demon and the Divine Monk — and thanks to him, I became a wretch who could never set foot in Murim again.
How, I wondered, had the Blood Demon's final moments been handed down in Murim's histories? No — history could wait. What had the rumors of the gangho, swifter than any tongue, made of it? That alone was enough to send fury surging up past all remedy.
"—Gal!!! Cheonma, you wretch! To think you had already stretched those filthy demonic hands all the way into Bonjwa's own homeland...!"
How could this be. While Bonjwa had dwelt in the world of Murim, not one corner of my homeland had remained beyond Cheonma's reach.
Cheonma, you wretch. How could you be a hunter, raid dungeons, raise children, become a beautiful girl, own buildings, sink your claws into the food-service industry, become a chaebol magnate, dole out unsolicited counsel left and right, do everything your heart desired — and then, on top of it all, become an idol, no, build an entire idol group out of nothing but Cheonmas?! When I saw Cheonma turned into a beautiful girl, tears had fallen for some reason I could not name — but regardless.
And on the other hand, the name Blood Demon. Eternally Murim's runner-up, crushed beneath Cheonma's radiance; a full rank below Cheonma no matter what it did — and when they even made an idol group, did they not make the Blood Demon an unwanted grain of rice wedged in among all the Cheonmas? They cast the Blood Demon's renown into the dirt and raised Cheonma's name to the heavens. What manner of sorcerous chicanery was this information control...!
Cheonma — don't tell me you were one of those despicable Orthodox faction types all along...!
And who in the world could stop the atrocities of a Cheonma who had already claimed the food-service industry? To chew over my freshly remembered rage, I pulled out a notebook — a children's notebook swarming with cutesy cartoon characters, which I used only because Sea-ah had bought nothing else. Yet the words scrawled across it in a hand as fierce as any warrior's brushstroke were not the least bit cute.
The Kill Ledger.
The ledger of grudges and vengeance piled up since my return home — the record upon which every last score would be settled while I bided my time in hardship!
1. Cheonma
2. Namgung Yerin
3. The Desk
DEATH. Wunhak Jin-in
The root cause of Bonjwa's imprisonment in this frail girl's body. I carved that hideous name at the very top of the Kill Ledger, soon to be soaked in my enemies' hot blood, so that I might chew upon my grudge without end!
Cheonma, wait for me! The Blood Demon is coming!
"I cannot... simply sit still like this!"
To check the ambitions of a Cheonma whose demonic hands had already spread into every industry of my homeland, I would first have to reclaim my martial arts! And so I once more assumed the demonic stance...
"Hah... hek... heeeeh..."
Bonjwa, who had collapsed after a mere eight seconds, began to ponder what could be done to catch up to the Cheonma who had raced so far ahead. Cooking. ...Couldn't do it! Idols. ...Wouldn't do it! As I kept running through the candidates, I was forced to confront a bitter truth: the only thing I knew how to do was martial arts.
How could anyone be so powerless. This girl's body seized upon that fleeting helplessness and, without missing a beat, began to drip tears. Cheonma was versatile to this extent, and the Blood Demon — whose one and only skill was martial arts — could not even beat Cheonma with that...?!
"—Martial arts? Yes... martial arts...!"
At that moment a realization like a bolt of lightning tore through my mind, and I cried out. Yes. Martial arts. As the Blood Demon, I had indeed lost the world-shaking feats that once struck the heavens and clove the seas. But losing my martial arts meant, in the end, only that I had lost my internal energy and my tempered flesh. I could not say whether that power could ever be reclaimed — but the knowledge and experience stored in my head had hardly vanished, had they? And the level and variety of the arts and secret manuals packed into this skull could stand beside the Scripture Pavilion of the Shaolin Temple itself and want for nothing.
Among the novels I had read, there had even been a Cheonma who became a backseat gamer. Bonjwa — the Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin — had likewise never once passed by a subordinate playing baduk without stopping to offer counsel at their side...! And each time, my subordinates had bowed their heads and trembled at the shoulders — surely shedding tears of gratitude. Yes! Even against Cheonma, as a professional backseater, victory was assured!
"Prepare yourself, Cheonma."
I would select a suitable Martial Arts Awakener — ideally an internet streamer whose face would easily become known to the public — and instruct them in my secret manuals. Anyone already famous, or grown as far as they could grow, had to be avoided; they simply lacked impact. A streamer who would grow in shocking, unprecedented ways, like the protagonist of a web novel. And behind that streamer would stand Bonjwa — the backseating Blood Demon...!
The era of being treated like a child, of being scorned by a little sister who refused to believe me no matter how many times I declared myself the Blood Demon, was over. So this — was this the end of my childhood?
I painted the beautiful future about to unfold across the canvas of my mind.
"We don't take on disciples so carelessly..."
"Ahh~ don't go spreading that around, all right? Everyone will be begging me to take them as their master~"
That went hard.
"Hehe, hehah, hahahahahah—!!"
Ahh. This chill, this heavy, weighty sensation. It was time to return to being Cheon Yujin, the Blood Demon.
"And that's Bbaekdo! Thanks for watching, thanks for watching!"
An average of five viewers, give or take. A bottom-tier streamer among bottom-tier streamers, streaming under the name Bbaekdo. Baek Dogyeong ended his broadcast in the entrance hall of the guild lobby and let out the sigh he had been holding.
It had already been months since he'd become a Martial Arts Awakener — the kind of lucky class where, if you awakened with good martial arts, you could outpace everyone else from the very start. Time enough that others had long since found their place as hunters in their own right, while Baek Dogyeong was still floundering in the low-grade hunter's seat, just one more straggler left behind. The internet stream he'd started in hopes of finding some way out had, in the end, sunk to bottom-tier right along with his hunter rank. These days there were even trolls with bratty usernames like vSupremeBloodDemonv cluttering the scene, and he was seriously considering quitting altogether.
"Haah..."
It wasn't as if he'd wanted the martial arts of some illustrious school — the famed Nine Sects Alliance or the Eight Great Clans, that caliber of legend. With ordinary talent, at least the art itself should have been outstanding; instead his was some bottom-tier technique he'd never heard of anywhere. When he'd joined the Sungmuryeon Guild, a place only Martial Arts Awakeners could enter, he had truly believed a bright future was waiting for him.
"A bright future... must mean people like him."
Beyond the lobby, a hunter of towering build was walking past.
"Kang Mujin..."
Baek Dogyeong murmured the hunter's name, hunching his shoulders. The man was only a few years older than he was, yet a short while ago he had been a promising rookie and had already climbed to an executive seat — a Martial Arts Awakener who had awakened the famous Mount Hua Sect's arts. From that single fact his very nature was different, and his talent stood heaven and earth apart from Baek Dogyeong's. Reflecting on his own shabby lot, Baek Dogyeong suddenly thought of something and burst into a hollow laugh.
A genius and a failure. Wasn't this exactly the opening chapter of a web novel's protagonist?
"I wonder if some lucky encounter or cheat power will drop into my lap too."
Beep.
As if answering Baek Dogyeong's longing, his smartwatch suddenly chimed. Startled, he checked the notification at once.
And then.
"Th-this is...!"
It was.
"...Chinese characters. Chinese?"
A long message in Chinese characters, filling the entire screen.
"China, it's you again? Ugh. Delete, block."
BackseatBloodDemon.
The serialization was cancelled after a single episode.