The Honor of Mano
No matter how she thought about it, her brother Cheon Yujin's physical condition was strange. This was the conclusion Cheon Se-ah had reached after a month of living under the same roof and watching him with meticulous care. Granted, the mere fact that her brother had come back as a tiny girl barely half his own size was strange beyond all reason, but still.
In the chaos right after Cheon Yujin's return, there had only been time for the most basic examinations. Perhaps mostly because the diagnoses that had come out of the neuropsychiatrist's mouth, panic disorder, escapism, infantile regression, had been too frightening to hear. Above all, watching Cheon Yujin stammer and fumble through every single question the doctor asked, she had been able to roughly guess where the trauma had begun. Doctors, white coats, hospitals, traces of abuse, trauma... It was a combination that couldn't help but point somewhere.
In front of her brother, she always played the strong one, the composed one, the one nothing could touch... acting like a little sister who had matured in his absence. And that was precisely why Cheon Se-ah was all the more afraid.
Her brother, who now ate every meal with delight, fidgeting hands and all, and wriggled around rolling across the floor wrapped in blankets like some adorable little animal... That brother, transformed from the reliable figure of the old days into an innocent child, might in truth be suffering terribly. That beneath the surface, his heart might already be shattered. The mere act of imagining it squeezed the breath right out of her.
'But... I can't let this go on. I can't leave it alone any longer.'
It had already been a month. The basic tests had found nothing seriously wrong, apart from a body that was unusually weak. She didn't believe anything had taken a turn for the worse in the time since, either, but having seen her brother's condition with her own eyes, Cheon Se-ah couldn't help nursing a quiet urgency.
Her brother seemed to be trying to hide it, but from time to time Cheon Se-ah had caught him doing something that looked like secret exercise. It was probably a movement that resembled a squat, though it was a posture that required nothing more than standing still. The reason it counted not as exercise but as "something presumed to be exercise" was simple: it had never once lasted longer than ten seconds.
And at that moment, Cheon Se-ah had been forced to face the cruel reality she had been desperately denying. That her brother Cheon Yujin's body carried some aftereffect no one could name...!
'Yes, there's no other explanation. How else could...' Frail or not, this was too much. How could anyone fail to hold a posture that asked nothing but to stand still, not for thirty seconds, not even for three...! Even a three-year-old could imitate something like that for well over three seconds without trying!
The sight of Cheon Yujin, in under three seconds, toppling over and rolling across the floor in a sniffling, hopeless wreck was the very image of a newborn. Aftereffects stemming from psychological wounds she could understand, to a degree. Her brother, turned into such an innocent child, must surely have been through shocking, agonizing things in his life in that other world. Why else would he, the instant anything turned even slightly against him, shout his trademark "Bonjwa...!" and start fleeing reality first? But this, no matter how she turned it over, belonged to a completely different category from infantile regression or escapism. This was physical!
Remembering the marks of beating and abuse first found on Cheon Yujin's body, she could put it off no longer. Not an ordinary checkup at any hospital, but a precision examination built on the new technology born of the Gate crisis. And at a place that could do it as soon as possible, without waiting through an endless queue of appointments. Having weighed the candidates, Cheon Se-ah could only despair, once again, at her own position. 'Everywhere is dangerous. The old comrades might find out my brother exists.'
Her first thought for a helper had been Kim Jinhu, Guild Master of the Iron Blood Guild. But after a brief moment's consideration, she had to abandon the idea at once. The sole surviving classmate, a friend of ten years; if anyone would keep the secret and help even knowing everything, it would be Kim Jinhu. Brusque and flippant as he always was, he was a friend more trustworthy than anyone, and a comrade in arms. But he was also the head of an organization, the leader who steered the Iron Blood Guild. He stood in a position bearing far heavier responsibility than her own as a solo hunter, and she had no wish to make a friend cross a river full of danger on her behalf.
The name that survived all that sifting was 'Rachel Lee.' A medical professional in the peaceful age before the Gates, and afterward one of the very first awakeners. To Cheon Se-ah, she was a dependable comrade who had fought beside her on front after front and healed every wound and every loss imaginable. Unlike the other comrades still active as hunters to this day, Rachel Lee had retired from hunting the moment the age of reconstruction dawned. A 1st-generation hunter by origin, yet someone who had returned not to the field but to medicine and research. And above all, she had retired because her husband, given up for dead in the age of reconstruction, had come back as a Returnee. He had gained power as a Returnee, and in exchange, he was one of those who returned from circumstances as grim as Cheon Yujin's.
'So... it should be safe to tell Rachel unnie.' She might even be persuaded to take him on as her patient outright. In the position Cheon Yujin occupied now, as a Returnee, finding a proper attending physician, a competent one at that, was anything but easy. Rachel had spent all these years beside a husband who had come back as a Returnee. A woman like her, Se-ah hoped, might even find a way to heal the wounds her brother carried in his heart. Carrying those hopes, she had reached out, and the answer had come back yes. Cheon Se-ah wanted to bring her brother to Rachel as quickly as she possibly could.
And so....
"Ah... you're feeling bad after all? You keep muttering something under your breath.... Should we just go home?"
"I-I'm f-fine...! We're g-going...!"
Having lured Cheon Yujin out of the house with a little sleight of hand, she would come to regret it. His face, already snow-white, had gone pale to the point of pity. The way he cowered in on himself, guarded to an excessive degree, casting an anxious glance at every single person who passed. He'd mentioned having some symptoms of a fear of people, but this was far too much. He was plainly, unmistakably afraid of them. And for some reason, whenever they passed the elderly or small children, that wariness visibly swelled even higher.
'The elderly... and children.' For now, Cheon Se-ah calmly filed those keywords away in her mind. They might be tied to the cause of the trauma her brother stammered and stumbled to hide. Over the past month he had so often shown her a bright face that she'd come to believe he was slowly getting better. But he wasn't. Perhaps all of it had been nothing but composure put on for his little sister's sake? Exactly like right now: like this very moment, his anxious eyes never resting as they swept their surroundings, even while he kept insisting he was fine just to reassure her.
And so Cheon Se-ah made a resolution. Whatever her brother Cheon Yujin might do, she would become someone who could understand it all, and accept it. And then.
"Hic, sob... the baduk board... b-bring it here...! Qu-quickly!"
"Eh?"
Se-ah wore the expression of someone who had left her wits behind on some far-off roadside. The sight of her clinging to me and wailing up a storm the moment I "recovered from my faint" was gone; now she simply blinked, mouth hanging open. Hmph, no. It was not a faint. I had merely closed my eyes for the briefest of moments. I did not, most assuredly not, at any rate, lose consciousness...!
I, Bonjwa, the Blood Demon Cheon Yujin, am the hero among heroes who, back when my martial arts were still meager, took a sword qi to the belly and, with no golden wound salve to be had, seared the wound shut with flame to stop the bleeding. And this Bonjwa would faint at the sight of a syringe? Does that make a shred of sense...! This goddamn body! It seemed the body of a small child came with some instinct branded into it, a terror of hospitals and needles.
The syringe in Rachel's hand, as she blinked behind her glasses and stared at me in open disbelief. The tip of that syringe kept drifting into my field of vision, but Bonjwa has never once in his life been afraid of an injection. Not once!
"Cheon Yujin, you're trembling terribly.... Perhaps we should postpone the blood draw for now."
"...Gal! The baduk board...!"
In any case, not once! Which is why postponing it here would be a disgrace to any warrior! Even were I to stake the honor of Mano, my right arm and the finest strategist Blood Heaven Castle ever produced, I would have this blood drawn without a flicker of fear! And so, refusing to yield an inch, I demanded the baduk board with iron resolve.
"No, oppa! I have no idea why a baduk board, but where in the world are we supposed to get one here?"
"No, there is one, actually."
"Unnie?!"
"My husband's hobby is baduk. He says playing online isn't the same, so we keep a few boards around."
Hold on, it actually exists? I barely strangled the objection in my throat and waited in stony silence. In the end, a single baduk board lay spread out before me. Gazing upon it, I leveled a finger at Se-ah.
"Se-ah, hey. A grand match..."
"I don't really know baduk..."
"Then... five-in-a-row..."
Playing five-in-a-row against Se-ah with my left hand, I extended my right arm out to Rachel. Rachel, who for a moment blinked as her gaze traveled back and forth between my stick-thin forearm and the baduk board, finally spoke.
"Uh... so, you want me to draw it, then? Se-ah, your brother is genuinely hilarious."
Se-ah ducked her head low, face blazing scarlet, but such trifles meant nothing to me now. Bonjwa, the Blood Demon Cheon Yujin, being the finest under heaven, never loses his composure, no matter the situation. Like Lord Guan Yu, who played baduk with unshaken poise even through the agony of having his bone scraped...!
"Haaah, hic, haaa......"
The needle crept closer and closer. Perhaps it had at last submitted to my towering will; even this cursed body sat playing five-in-a-row with perfect composure, without spilling so much as a single tear.
"Hic, haaaah, ngh......"
My vision kept going misty at the edges, and something damp kept welling up, but they say even Guan Yu poured cold sweat in the middle of his surgery, so what else could this possibly be but sweat!
Prick. Sliiiide.
............!!!
Lord Guan Yu, are you watching? Today, as ever, I have protected the honor of Mano, which I came so close to losing. Heh.
"This... is Murim... isn't it..."
Anyway, that was how it went.