The Butterfly Dream
The girl, Seomun Eunha. Her mother had passed away when she was young, so the two of them had to live alone, just her and her father. Seomun Eunha loved her father. To her, at least, he was the best father there was, a man with twice the affection to give, more than enough to fill the empty place her mother had left behind.
He drew rent from a small building and ran a baduk studio as a hobby, the game of Go with its black and white stones. Even seated before the board, the moment she came scampering to him he would toss aside the stones he loved so well and gather her into his arms; even buried deep in his next move, readjusting his glasses, he would look up at her, and that gentle smile would spread across his face. She loved that smile.
But then. At fourteen, just entering middle school, giddy over a brand-new life, the new life arrived in a different form altogether. A gate torn open in midair. Monsters pouring out of it. He threw himself in front of his helpless daughter, and was reduced to a mangled mass of flesh...
"A-aaah, aaah, aaaaah...!!!"
She raked her nails wildly across her own face until bright red blood came away. Tears streamed from eyes so bloodshot they seemed ready to burst, mingling with the blood, until neither could be told apart anymore.
"AAAAAAAAAH...!!!"
Screaming like a newborn, Seomun Eunha wanted power. She simply craved it: to change herself, helpless and able to do nothing at all, and to exterminate those hideous monsters like so many worthless pests. She hungered for it, and hungered, and hungered again.
And so, as if in answer to that craving, she was swept away, helpless, by the wave of mana that burst from the opening gate, and the girl Seomun Eunha became one of the very first awakeners.
From that day on, she began to dream a warrior's dream. It was the dream of a great warrior, something beyond even the power she had fantasized about with her shallow imagination and craved with her desperate vengeance: a being who kicked off the earth to tread upon the clouds, whose sword raised storms and shook heaven and earth until the rains fell, the living incarnation of commanding wind and rain sculpted into human form. A crane soaring into the vast heavens, beating its wings in lofty solitude above the sea of clouds.
The South Reveres Wudang. Unhak, the Cloud Crane. The foremost elder of the Wudang Sect of his generation, and its foremost master; an absolute master without rival across both great worlds of Murim, revered as the greatest under heaven, the Sword Immortal.
Yet, as if to mock that venerable banner of the South-revered Wudang, a black storm had descended from the distant North and, in time, swept away all of Murim. The Greatest Demon Under Heaven. The Heavenly Demon. Kneeling before the newly born greatest under heaven, that warrior's magnificent life met its end; and in that even its ending was tragic, it was as complete a heroic saga as any ever told.
And Seomun Eunha knew that the ones who slew monsters had always been the heroes of myth.
"I want to become one, too."
She dreamed that life over and over, and over, and over again.
"No... I will become one."
The engine driving Seomun Eunha's obsession was a thoroughgoing self-loathing: hatred and contempt for the self who could do nothing that day. Ordinarily, martial arts awakeners unconsciously block themselves from living through the whole of the "original's" life, all to protect the borders of their own egos, but her overwhelmingly exceptional talent, and the craving tempered by tragedy, had been shattering that safeguard without her ever knowing. And so, with madness and obsession, she forgot her frail self, melted it soft, let it dissolve and blend and blend again until she could lose herself completely within that faintly drifting butterfly dream of an entire life. There, Seomun Eunha took up the sword, and the trajectory of the Wudang sword path that the Sword Immortal had traced into the far distance with a single blade became a line she could follow perfectly.
And Seomun Eunha remembers: how, watching her father's gentle smile at the baduk board, she would mirror it without realizing; how she had wailed at the top of her lungs before her fallen father, weeping tears of blood in despair and hatred and helplessness. Picking through those old memories tangled with happiness and tragedy, Seomun Eunha felt pity, and compassion.
"...Ah."
And so, without hatred, without despair, without sorrow, ruminating on memories stained by a girl's tragedy through nothing but pity and compassion, within that faintly drifting butterfly dream of an entire life, "Unhak Jinin" opened his eyes.
"...A tragedy. What a tragedy this is."
He carried the girl's memories, yet not a trace of her emotions remained; they were nothing more than a scene from a story now. And so Seomun Eunha died, and the departed gained a new life.
Martial arts awakener. Since I might have to keep up the pretense for the foreseeable future, I could not afford to be ignorant of even the common knowledge surrounding them. I had quietly done my research online, and the "dream" that every martial arts awakener was said to have at least once already belonged to the fairly famous tier of lore.
Not that This Supreme One had ever actually undergone one, so I had wondered now and then just how the experience translated into learning a martial art... This Supreme One, the Blood Demon Cheon Yujin. The Forged Blood Art differs from ordinary qi cultivation, true, but neither does it wield mana the way an awakener does. It is, unmistakably, an art This Supreme One devised personally; in other words, nothing gained through awakening. Strictly speaking, This Supreme One is no martial arts awakener, so there should be no reason at all for this creeping chill. And yet, that should certainly be the case...
"............"
What rose in my mind was my bout with Kang Mu-jin, the Mount Hua martial arts awakener. Kang Mu-jin: the whirling snow, the field of white, a seed of a warrior not yet in bloom, mad for the martial way and aching for its endless answer. Kang Mu-jin's Seven Plum Sword Art, and the distinctive habit laced through the forms of Seven Blossoms in Riot that his sword had traced.
Once, among the Nine Dragons, the masters who stood at the head of the orthodox sects, there had been a single supreme master of Mount Hua. He favored the forms of the Seven Plum Sword Art over the Plum Blossom Sword Art, and after suffering utter defeat in a duel against This Supreme One, he declared a closed-door seclusion and vanished from Murim altogether. And Kang Mu-jin's Seven Plum Sword had matched that swordsman's perfectly, down to his signature habits, as though no one other than This Supreme One had crossed back and forth between the two worlds. The Murim connected to this world was not the Murim of some other world... it was the very Murim I had known.
By what principle such a phenomenon occurred, I could not say. But it was not mere connection: it was certain that the warriors and martial arts This Supreme One knew firsthand existed as the "originals" of awakened arts.
"...Ngh."
I glanced once at Unhak Jinin in that girl's body, then looked down at my own tiny palm, not even half the size of the one I remembered from my former self. Not a thick hand armored in calluses, but a thin, soft girl's palm. Perhaps. Perhaps, among them, This Supreme One as well...
"It seems This old man has gone and told too dreary an old tale. You are a martial arts awakener yourself, so no wonder it weighs on you..."
Unhak Jinin's cool, unhurried voice roused me from the depths of that brooding.
"Among the martial arts awakeners out there, as countless as the stars in the night sky, my case is the sole exception. The odds of anything similar happening to you are vanishingly small."
"The only one..."
"That's right, the only one. It took more than talent; heaven's fortune and misfortune had to pile atop one another to make it so... I assure you, there is no need to worry about anything similar befalling you."
Unhak Jinin clasped his hands behind his back, wearing a gentle smile that sat oddly on such a young-looking face. This Supreme One gave my head a rough shake of my own, sweeping the pointless musings away. If the girl had truly been erased entirely, a newborn with no memory of what came before, that would be one thing; but by Unhak Jinin's own account, the original owner's memories remained intact, did they not? It was precisely because the Unhak Jinin before me happened to wear a girl's shape that the overlaps piled up and I flinched for a moment, but there were far too many contradictions to map his case onto mine. Besides, This Supreme One is a fake awakener and a Returnee in truth; the two stories had nothing to do with each other. The instant I set my expression,
"My, my. I told you all this because I thought seventeen was quite old enough to count as an adult... but you look rather grim. Are you well?"
An adult. That's right...! I had forgotten all this time, but by Unhak Jinin's measure, seventeen was already fully an adult by Murim's standards...!!! Unlike this modern age with its strict age of majority, in that era it was an age more than worthy of being treated as a grown man!
"...Heh."
Unhak Jinin. I had taken him for nothing more than some bottom-rung little Daoist of the orthodox Wudang... but in a land far from home, were we not all fellow children of Murim?
"I-I am quite well...! For I am... an adult...!"
Forcing out that stiff, polite register made it feel as though thorns were sprouting from my mouth. At that, Unhak Jinin beamed with the girl's face and slipped a hand into his robes.
"Oho... how precious, how precious. Well now, would you like a candy?"
"Huh?"
I wished he would pick one: treat me as an adult, or treat me as a child. And hearing that grandfatherly tone from a face that looked barely old enough for middle or high school made the dissonance overflow entirely. But it was not as though This Supreme One particularly wanted that sweet-and-tangy candy, the kind that, rolled around in the mouth, brings a long stretch of pure bliss; I held out my hand purely to save face for Unhak Jinin, who had gone to the trouble of offering.
"Th-then... just one... please!"
Beaming, Unhak Jinin drew a candy from his robes with a fresh, sunny smile and set it atop my palm.
"......"
That candy. It was red ginseng candy.
"N-not to your taste, it seems. H-how about this one?"
Scorched-rice candy.
"A-and this one...?"
Butterscotch candy.
"Then this one...?"
Fruit-flavored candies dusted thick with white powder, kept in a tin.
"If not candy, then how about this...?"
Red ginseng jelly.
"............"
This Supreme One's face went dead serious. Unhak Jinin, whom I had taken for a fellow child of Murim met in a far-off land. So it was true... This Supreme One could never coexist with those despicable orthodox sects, who raise expectations on purpose only to betray them every single time...!!!
"...Ahem!"
Unhak Jinin quietly tucked the candies back into his robes and cleared his throat.
"Now then! I trust you have had quite enough schooling on the subject of This old man's age! I believe it is time I explained what you will be doing as my mentee, Student Yujin!"
Sea-ah, too, had presumably been made to meet me in advance for that very reason, Unhak Jinin added, raising a finger. He was doing his best to look composed, but a single tear was glimmering faintly at the corner of one eye...
"Come along now, come along. There is something quite interesting beneath This old man's building."
"Something interesting...?"
"I had meant to bring you there once I had met my other student, Bukgung Seol, as well... but let this serve as my apology for startling you today. You shall see it first."
Unhak Jinin walked slowly on ahead, hands folded behind his back like some old man. Then, turning his head just slightly to look back at me, he said:
"A Murim dungeon gate. One that This old man has been keeping hidden all this while."