A Clean Bill of Health

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Clatter-roll it went. The ballpoint pen rolled across the floor for a good long while before finally coming to rest at my feet. I flinched for a moment at Rachel's unsettling reaction, hesitated, then picked the pen up.

"Rachel...?"

I scooped it up and darted straight over to hand it back, but Rachel accepted it without so much as a thank-you or any reply at all. She simply went on staring at me, blank-faced and drained of color.

"...Ah, um."

This was nothing like the Rachel I knew—the one who lived by the proud principle that a doctor must never waver in front of a patient, who was always leisurely adjusting her glasses as she walked you through the day's results in that soft, unhurried voice of hers. She had been pale to begin with, Western-born as she was, but right now it was far worse than usual.

"Rachel? Are you okay?"

"Unnie, what is it? Is our Oppa really sick somewhere?!"

Se-ah cut in, shouting like she was half a seizure away from collapsing herself, and only then did Rachel seem to come back to her senses. She shook her head and raised both hands, trying to calm Se-ah down.

"...Ah, right! Sorry, Se-ah. Sorry, Cheon Yujin. It's just... um... the blood pressure and the temperature startled me a little, that's all."

"Really...?"

I mean, even Se-ah, family and all, was trembling in shock, but she hadn't been bleached bone-white the way Rachel was. Wasn't this a bit of an overreaction, no matter how you looked at it...?

I knew, having achieved the Forged Blood Art, that this frail body of mine—weak as it remained—was growing healthier by the day. Martial arts, after all, were never practiced purely to harden the flesh and hit people harder. Plenty of masters who had pushed the martial path to its extreme lived well past a hundred, because the arts served the purpose of nurturing life as well; unless it was a demonic art that sacrificed everything else for power, training was bound to make you healthier. So I could say with confidence that this body, however delicate it looked, was far sturdier than your average person's. And yet with the doctor carrying on like that, an inexplicable dread kept welling up in me all the same.

Just then, Rachel spoke, anxiously fidgeting with her red-framed glasses.

"Um, Cheon Yujin. This time, too—when the nosebleed started... was there any headache or fever with it?"

"...?"

Strange. The question felt oddly familiar, like something I'd heard somewhere before, and I rummaged through my memory for a moment.

After my bout with Kang Mujin, my spirit had transcended itself and driven this body past its limits, and I had collapsed with a nosebleed. When I came to, Rachel had already asked me this exact same question once before.

"Headache... fever...?"

Well, of course there had been. I'd collided crown-to-crown with Bukgung Seol, and that very spot just happened to be where that lump-raising menace Kang Mujin had landed his blow. Every time I threw my head back cackling like I had earlier, my crown throbbed as though it were about to crack open.

"Hmm..."

And then there was the other matter. The Forged Blood Art was an art that circulated its dual-strengthening power both within the body and beyond it. Back when the art had been nothing more than an entry-stage technique, Se-ah—that middle-school-graduate idiot—had committed her inhumane, immoral slip of the tongue, wondering aloud if it was some "portable hot-pack ability," and she hadn't been entirely wrong: every time I drew the power in or sent it out, my blood vessels heated and my whole body burned, so you could reasonably call it a fever. So if she asked whether I had those symptoms, I could honestly have answered that I did. Of course, they were a headache and a fever of an entirely different nature from whatever Rachel was trying to ask about, and I'd been about to tell her there was nothing of the sort—but I had forgotten that this damn body of mine was utterly hopeless at managing its own expressions.

"...That expression of yours. I take it something does come to mind."

"...Oppa?"

"Huh? N-no, it's not like that—"

Rachel's face hardened in an instant. Se-ah's went bone-white, exactly like Rachel's had moments ago. I panicked and had to flap my arms every which way. Look, it wasn't that nothing came to mind, but I had a distinct feeling that what each of us was suspecting was... perhaps not quite the same thing...!!!

Before I could squeeze out a single word of protest—

"Cheon Yujin."

"N-no, wait, this is just my martial ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a—"

"Today was only supposed to be the basic examination, but I'll be running a full workup starting now. You understand, don't you?"

"That's not it, it's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Forged Blo—"

"Se-ah, help Cheon Yujin over to the exam room, please."

"Got it, Unnie. Oppa, just bear with it a little... it's only an examination, okay? I knew that nosebleed of yours was suspicious."

"N-no waaay... it's the Forged Blooood Aaart...!!!"

I, Blood Demon Cheon Yujin. Should I have simply shouted it out in terms Se-ah could grasp—that my body was only hot because of my portable hot-pack ability? Seized by both arms by the two women, dragged across the floor because the difference in our heights left my feet trailing like a cat hauled off by its hind legs, I was escorted off to the examination room...

And then.

"Normal, normal, normal... no abnormality in function... this one's normal too, normal. With blood pressure and temperature this high... and yet absolutely nothing is physically wrong...?"

Chart in hand, Rachel muttered at a rapid clip, flipping wildly through the pages as if she couldn't make sense of them. Well, of course. The Forged Blood Art did put strain on the body when driven hard, but at its core it was an art of cultivation...! I had devised it specifically to compensate for this frail body, so what would be the point if it had no health-preserving effect? That would defeat its very purpose!

"U-um, Unnie? Really? Our Oppa is actually healthy? There's nothing seriously wrong, right? My heart is seriously about to give out..."

"Cheon Se-ah. Calm down and breathe deeply."

"Hoo, hoo, hooo..."

Rachel tapped the chart with the end of her pen as she spoke.

"So... going by the visible numbers, everything is very normal. The blood pressure and temperature are abnormal, but... looking at the actual results alone... I'd have to say you're far healthier than you were at your first examination."

"Phew, thank goodness... Then what on earth is with this blood pressure and temperature...?"

Se-ah heaved a huge sigh of relief, then tilted her head and went back to studying the temperature and blood-pressure lines on the chart.

.........

But Rachel, the one who had actually run the full workup, made no effort to hide her confusion, her gaze darting between the chart and me, Cheon Yujin. It was the look of someone rechecking a result she couldn't quite bring herself to believe. Not that any of that mattered to me.

I, Blood Demon Cheon Yujin, was—for the first time in ages—on the verge of tears at the sheer injustice of it all...!!!

"Ssss—! Y-you didn't... you didn't even give me... a chance to explain..."

"O-Oppa?"

"This is... my martial art... my awakening ability, that's aaall it is...! Se-ah, even you said it last time... the hot-pack thing and aaall that...!!"

"...Ah!"

Only then did Se-ah seem to remember, clapping her hands together with a sharp crack.

Fwoosh!

I drove the Forged Blood Art's power whirling through my entire body and vented the scorching yang energy out into the open air. Even among martial arts, there were strange techniques that turned the body ice-cold, or burning hot, or stiff as a corpse. Weren't there, famously, external arts that tempered the skin until it was hard as iron? If martial arts alone could do this much, then a world crawling with every manner of awakening ability could only be stranger, never milder.

"Whoa, you're really hot... So it really was that ability. Sorry, Oppa."

"I-if you get it now... that's enough..."

Well, she had only run the examinations she had to run. And if that middle-school-graduate idiot Se-ah's blood pressure and temperature had suddenly shot into abnormal territory, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I would have panicked too. But just then—

"Really... an awakening ability?"

I couldn't tell whether it was a murmur to herself or a question. Rachel said it while holding my gaze. The truth was that the Forged Blood Art wasn't any awakening ability or awakened technique—it was the genuine article, true martial arts—so my eyes flicked away despite myself.

"Mm... I see. So that's how it is."

.........?

Rachel nodded, her eyes sunk into something gloomy and resigned, as though she had just accepted something. And then—whether to force the mood back to normal or not—she suddenly spoke up in a much brighter voice.

"By the way, Cheon Yujin! You'll want to watch what you eat from now on."

"...Huh?"

"Look here. It's still within the normal range, but... your fasting blood sugar is quite a bit higher than average. If it climbs any further, you might find yourself in the diabetes risk group."

"D-diabetes?"

I thought back over everything I had eaten since my return. Setting aside the meals Se-ah cooked for me—every kind of fast food, sodas, great lumps of carbohydrate deep-fried in oil... and above all, the sweet snacks. Whenever temptation presented itself, whenever a chance to eat something sweet appeared, I had shoved it into my mouth first and asked questions never. And lately, even at the Academy, Namgung Yurin kept handing me snacks for some reason, so my intake had multiplied several times over.

"You have been... a little unrestrained, Oppa."

"N-no, that's—"

On this one point, I couldn't make a peep in my own defense. The numbers really had climbed straight through the health-preserving function of my martial art. Was my gluttony truly beyond even the power of the Forged Blood Art...?!

"Oppa, I... I know how much you love eating, but... maybe for a while... you could go easy on the snacks?"

Se-ah's eyes were a tangle of worry and earnest hope. Faced with that look, I couldn't help but chuckle. Sure, I had been eating without restraint, drunk on all the modern food I'd never had in Murim. But—

"I'm... an adult too, you know...! Skipping a few snacks isn't... isn't going to break me!"

"Oppa...!!!"

Right. It was only cutting back on snacks. If it eased my little sister's worry too, it was more than worth it. And with that thought, I smiled.

Three days later, at school.

"...Um, Jjin? Yujin? Cheon Yujin? You okay? Hey, you're not dead, are you...?"

.........

"S-should I give you a snack...?"

Namgung Yurin. A good girl, always bearing snacks. If she handed them over... I was prepared, as of today, to renounce the name Cheon Yujin and be reborn as Namgung Yujin.

I, Blood Demon Cheon Yujin, having at last bowed to the orthodox sects, stood at the very moment the dream of demonic world domination was scheduled for service termination.

"Everyone, this Saturday we have a field trip—a visit to a Gate—as part of our experiential learning."

"A Gate?"

"As you all know, some regional Gates have no creatures hostile to humans, so a few of them are even used for tourism. Still, a Gate is a Gate, so we've decided to leave participation up to each student's own choice."

Field trips. How nostalgic... I had memories of going on them back in elementary school. I just never imagined the Academy would have them too. Strip away the official name, and a field trip was, in the end, nothing more than a picnic.

"Jjin, what about you? Are you going?"

Naturally, I had no desire to wedge myself into a picnic for a pack of young brats. Nor did I particularly want to spend my weekend bothering with a safe Gate that would do nothing for my training.

"I, for one, shall not be—"

"Snacks are permitted on the condition that you bring a lunch box and pack out all your trash, so feel free to bring whatever you like."

"......Um. The deep-fried one packed full of ice cream sounds good."

"Oh, I'll have it ready."

Since everyone was going together, the snacks were simply unavoidable. Anyway, that was that.