Bonjwa Can't Take It Anymore!
"I can't... take this anymore...!!!"
Bonjwa. The Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin. With both hands thrust toward the heavens, I let out a magnificent cry.
Yes, I had endured as much as any soul could endure. The prison-like closed-door training and the hellish external cultivation I could bear, but this — this alone I could not bear a moment longer...!
My little sister, Cheon Se-ah.
To speak frankly, Bonjwa had not exactly been imprisoned by Se-ah, nor had my movements been restricted. The very idea of a third-rate little sister issuing a curfew to a first-rate older brother was absurd on its face. As a first-rate older brother — no, as Bonjwa, who had attained the divine domain of the Mythic Realm itself — how could I stand idly by while such an immoral, inhumane act dragged the martial world's code of honor through the mud!
After a major accident, confining me to the house or forbidding me from school — none of that had happened.
But... but still!
"Bonjwa is not a baby!!!"
Like an infant set down at the water's edge. Like a mother gripped by the fear that her child might crawl off wherever it pleased and slip beneath the surface. With exactly that motherly heart, she had spent every waking hour... throwing her hunter duties aside entirely, doing nothing but watching Bonjwa!
And besides... there was something terrifying in her eyes! Something so different from usual that it scared me half to death!
Even when I bathed or changed clothes in my room... I could feel the gaze of those jet-black eyes following me wherever I went....
True, I had grown used to this girl's body in the months since the change. True, I had half resigned myself to the fact that this body was astonishingly feeble — more so than the fact of being a girl at all — so I'd assumed there was nothing left to be embarrassed about.
That was what I had assumed.
"Changing clothes... showering... having a barrier up for that is going too far, isn't it...!"
Man's body or woman's body aside, wasn't this an embarrassing situation no matter how you sliced it?!
Stomp! Stomp! Face scarlet, Bonjwa hammered my feet roughly against the floor.
Girl's body or not... the sensation that my little sister was following me into my most private moments was enough to drive me out of my mind...!
Of course, at those moments Se-ah did at least seem to turn her gaze elsewhere. But the qi sense amplified by my arrival at the second tier of the Forged Blood Art, the Pure Blood Realm, registered the very existence of her barrier as clearly as a watchful stare...!
A life spent trembling, day after day, every minute of every second.
After I regained consciousness, it turned out there was nothing at all wrong with my physical health. Following Rachel's diagnosis, I had been discharged the very next day. And not only had Rachel pronounced me perfectly normal — having reached the Pure Blood Realm, Bonjwa had become robust beyond mere health!
In other words, this was, no matter how I looked at it, nothing more than a third-rate little sister's third-rate case of worry-warting...!
"........."
Well... all right... Se-ah had told me, "Oppa, you were in a coma for ten days," while wearing that characteristically eerie smile of hers....
Contrary to my expectation that it would last a day or two at most, I had... been out of it considerably longer, but still. Anyone so pathologically untroubled would have worried over an unconsciousness that long, but still.
Anyway... if the results were good, wasn't everything good!
How long was I to be dragged around by my little sister's tyranny? As an older brother, third-rate... no, worse than third-rate. No better than a servant scribe toiling on a hamster wheel!
"Yes... Bonjwa can bear it no longer...!"
Creeeak!
"Oppa, what can't you bear?"
"Bearing things well is Bonjwa's special talent."
"Hmm, I don't know what it is, but that's our Oppa for you. First-rate even at enduring."
"Mm!"
"If anything's uncomfortable or you need something, you tell me right away, okay? You've only just gotten out of the hospital, Oppa. Right?"
"Right!"
Thumbs-up.
Bonjwa raised a grand thumb toward the jet-black eyes peering through the gap in the door, then shut it in a flash.
And then.
"Heek, huk, heee...."
Gasping for breath, I clutched at my chest, washed over by a relief that left my whole body limp.
As expected of Bonjwa, the greatest under heaven, the Blood Demon...!
It was a moment that recalled the time I had barely, by half a breath, managed to respond to the legendary assassin who came for me with his killing intent sublimated into the very realm of Nothingness, his existence erased. A monstrous reaction speed, as though the seams of time itself had been carved away — such was the Blood Demon's martial way.
"Nyeheh."
With the reflexes of my old feeble body, even with the Forged Blood Art's aid, reacting this swiftly would have been impossible. Naturally, I laughed in high spirits at the potential of this flesh, evolved hand in hand with the art's advancement.
"...G-Gal—!!! Now is not the time to celebrate!"
Fwap! Fwap! Fwap! Shaking my head wildly from side to side, I whipped my long black hair into a disheveled mess.
I had only been taking it on purpose, careful not to become third-rate as an older brother. Bonjwa is no fool to be pushed around by his little sister. The hour of resolute action had arrived.
Creeeak — THUD!
Hurling the door open, Bonjwa strode grandly into the living room.
"You there, Cheon Se-ah...!!!"
"Goodness, you startled me. Do you need some—"
"Behold, Cheon Se-ah! The strength of Bonjwa... grown mighty!"
"Wha-at?"
That's right. Resolute action meant...
...personally demonstrating just how robust Bonjwa had become, so that Se-ah — that middle-school-dropout fool — would know there was no longer any need to worry!
How much suffering and indignity had this frail body put me through all this time? The horse stance took far too long to demonstrate, and it was boring besides. And so Bonjwa planted myself before the custom dumbbell Se-ah had gifted me when I first took up exercise — the one I had left gathering dust all this while, because in all my external training I had never once managed to lift it.
The 10-kilogram dumbbell... a despairing weight like the Buddha's palm that once trapped the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, like Mount Tai itself.
"Hyaah!"
With a short cry, Bonjwa took a 10-kilogram dumbbell in each hand... and began pumping them up and down with ease.
Having used the Forged Blood Art to crush giant bears and absorb Bukgung Seol's demonic qi head-on, I had accomplished far greater feats any number of times, so it might have looked like nothing.
"Heehee...!"
But Bonjwa grinned from ear to ear. Because this — and this was the truly staggering part — had been done without the Forged Blood Art's assistance. Without channeling a single thread of internal energy. Purely on the strength of flesh and bone alone!
Back in the art's Entry Realm days, there had been a time when even with the aid of my qi I could only barely, wheezing and straining, hoist a 3-kilogram dumbbell. And in the days before the Forged Blood Art at all, my body would collapse a single second into the horse stance. Through the pure qi of the Forged Blood Art, this flesh had passed through a metamorphosis... and while it still fell short of an ordinarily trained martial artist of the murim, at the very least I now possessed a body somewhat sturdier than an average girl's!
"See, Se-ah? Bonjwa is the picture of health! So... the barrier, you can drop it...."
No — seriously, drop it...!
A barrier guarding Bonjwa was not a bad thing in itself. The problem was my qi sense. Because I could perceive the barrier's existence far too distinctly, it felt as though Se-ah's gaze followed me everywhere I went.
"Look, look! I'm fine, aren't I?"
With a light plop, I set the dumbbells down — not one drop of sweat on my body. Bonjwa smirked and flashed a V with my fingers, but for some reason... Se-ah's expression shifted from that eerily unsettling smile to something darker. Uneasy.
"The closer he gets to his limit... the more his physical abilities grow... No way."
"...Se-ah?"
"Ah — it's nothing. Did you hear that?"
"What did you just say...?"
"Just talking to myself, just to myself. Anyway, Oppa — since you're so healthy now... you just don't want to be around someone like me anymore, is that it?"
"Eh?"
Something about it felt like a hasty change of subject... but the conversation had already swerved into territory where pointing that out was impossible.
"The barrier only holds while I'm nearby... so if you don't need the barrier, that means you don't need me either. Right? No?"
"Ah — no. That's..."
"Yes? No?"
"N-No... it's not like that..."
Wh-what was happening. My argument had been airtight enough to make even Ma-noe shed tears of admiration and roll a full 1080 degrees across the floor in prostration, as he always did. So why, why was the conversation flowing... somewhere... strange...!
Se-ah turned her head slightly away. With her face averted I couldn't read her expression, but her voice... was cold as a blade's edge.
"That's not the face of someone who means no. The barrier was just an excuse... I only wanted a little more time with you, Oppa. So you hated it, huh? If you hated it that much — enough to squirm like that — you should have just said so..."
"Th-that's not — I don't hate it..."
"I still like it, you know. Going places with you like we used to, eating together... all of it. But Oppa doesn't anymore, does he...?"
"Th-that's not..."
"I'm just a nuisance to you now. Something you'd rather be rid of... Yeah. That's it, isn't it. Right?"
Se-ah's chilly voice grew weaker and weaker, until at the end it had lost all its force entirely — a gloomy, desolate murmur.
And that sight... reminded me of the time long ago when Bonjwa, buried in work, had left little Se-ah — an elementary schooler back then — waiting all on her own. The moment I recalled her from those days, eyes brimming, voice choking on tears...
...I understood, with perfect clarity, what I had just done to the little sister an older brother ought to die before failing.
"N-No, that's absolutely not it!!!"
Bonjwa cried out, flailing my arms in a frantic scramble, and Se-ah's head turned back around.
"See? Then there's no problem at all, is there?"
"Y-yeah!"
"Then this conversation is over!"
Clap! Se-ah beamed, hands pressed together. With my little sister's cheerful smile restored, Bonjwa was, once again, first-rate as an older brother too. The lackeys of those sects who had maligned Bonjwa as third-rate were the true third-rate tabloids.
But in the very instant I moved to wipe the sweat from my brow with my sleeve and smile in satisfaction...
".........?"
Something... wasn't right...?
"Nothing's certain yet... so it's fine... it's fine..."
Se-ah had buried herself in the sofa again and begun muttering something under her breath. Lately, I found myself thinking the one who truly deserved worrying over might be Se-ah, with her suspected case of emotional instability....
And so Se-ah went a little strange, and Bonjwa whiled away the days waiting only for the moment I could return to school. Because the one place beyond the reach of strange Se-ah's gaze... was school!
And in time, Bonjwa did return to school. But there was no refuge there, either.
"Hey, uhh... this might sound weird, but..."
Her face burning far redder than Bonjwa's own, scratching at her bleached-blonde hair...
"Would it be okay if I... tried calling you Unnie...?"
Because the ranks of the strange... had just grown by one more...!!!
