I Must Survive — Part Two Begins
Where, in all the murim, was the richest faction to be found?
The Emperor did not count. He was no martial artist.
The Demonic Cult, which held Guangdong and Guangxi? The Five Great Clans? Or the Lord of the Hao Sect, who commanded the industries of Guangzhou?
The answer was my own house — the Zhejiang Yu Family.
But perhaps Heaven had cursed us precisely because we had so much money. Count the direct line and the branch families together, and our clan still had almost no one in it.
In Grandmother's generation there was only Grandmother. Beneath her, only my mother and my uncle. Look below Mother's generation, and my uncle had no children, while Mother had three — myself included.
Of my eldest sister, for whatever reason, no word ever reached me. My second sister had all but cut her ties with the clan.
Which meant the one left in the family was...
Just me?
Monopolizing the love meant for everyone else was, of course, a blessing. But that love felt like far too much for me. Shutting a person inside the house for fifteen years was going too far.
"So. That is your excuse?"
Mother frowned as she heard me out.
"I-hyeon, listen well. It is common sense that a child who enters a sect at a young age — orthodox or unorthodox, it makes no difference — does not leave the sect grounds until coming of age at twenty, and does not leave even then unless their martial skill is sufficient. There are many places, moreover, that shut a disciple in a cave scarcely large enough to turn around in and hand them nothing but drinking water and fasting pills while they train."
"I have given you new clothes and new things with every season, and seen that you were fed dishes suited to the turn of the year. I have even given you a spiritual elixir once a year, to help your internal energy grow. And you call it excessive that I merely forbade you to leave the clan?"
Quietly, neatly, Mother took my argument apart.
Now that I thought about it, she might have had a point.
"Then even stepping just outside the gate..."
"No!"
And so I fled her office as if something were chasing me.
In the end, after wandering in circles, I had no choice but to drop onto the floor of the training ground I had already worn down thousands of times.
"Did I not tell you it would come to nothing?"
I had just been scolded, and here was Tomusa, beaming as if something wonderful had happened.
"Hah... honestly, I thought it would work this time."
"A shame. Even so, you cannot skip training. On your feet."
Tomusa held out a wooden sword.
So today, too, I was fated to get tossed around in here.
"I'm feeling low today, so go easy on me."
Today of all days — the day Mother had taken me to task — I wanted to slip through training a little more loosely.
"An opponent does not make allowances for the young master's mood."
Tomusa, it seemed, had no intention of doing so.
The crack and clatter of wooden swords filled the training ground.
Meanwhile, in the Clan Lord's hall that I-hyeon had just blown through...
"Even so, shouldn't we give our son a clear reason?"
I-hyeon's father asked his wife.
"You know as well as I how harsh this world is. I want nothing more than for our son, at least, to live in comfort until his days are done."
Yu Dan-a, I-hyeon's mother, answered in a heavy voice.
"He will be a grown man before long. Covering his eyes will not hide the ugliness of this world. It pains me as his parent, but I believe that child must also learn to look at reality."
I-hyeon's father drew his brooding wife into his arms.
"You are right. I will set my thoughts in order soon. Can you wait for me?"
"I'm not going anywhere. Waiting is I-hyeon's share to bear."
While the two of them shared that sweet, close talk in the office, I-hyeon seemed to have finished his spar with Tomusa.
"I yield! I yield!"
Tomusa's sword stopped just short of my throat.
For several seconds our eyes held. Then she drew the blade back.
"Well fought."
"You too, Tomusa."
A greeting like that, and the spar was over.
"You're as strong as ever. I can't beat you no matter what I do."
"It was a spar without internal energy. My sword is more practiced, and I am a woman — of course I win. There is no need to be so discouraged. Your swordsmanship grows by the day, young master. If only your consistency keeps pace, you will handle a blade at the level of a first-rate swordsman. Do not worry."
Nothing but kind words from Tomusa.
"Come on, I'm not a child. You don't have to say things like that. I'm not going to throw a tantrum and quit training just because you don't praise me."
It wasn't that I minded hearing it. It was only that she never said anything except whatever would spur me on.
"I speak only of objective fact."
"Then let's go one more time."
I took up the wooden sword and set my stance.
"Understood."
Tomusa smiled faintly and matched me.
A sharp crack split the air, and the sound of wooden swords colliding rang across the training ground until evening fell.
While I washed after training, my mind would not settle. I wonder if she's cooled off from this morning. Whether Mother's mood had recovered from what I had said was still anyone's guess, so I carried that worry with me to the dining table.
Sure enough, Mother and Father were already there. Fortunately, the look in her eyes suggested she did not mean to say much. I had barely taken my seat before the attendants brought in the food, and I told myself that, with what had been said during the day, she would let it lie.
"I-hyeon."
Contrary to that expectation, Mother addressed me.
"Yes?"
"I have thought it over, and I have come to feel that my treatment of you may have been severe."
Oh? What on earth had made Mother change her mind?
"So I mean to give you a choice. Once this decision is made, I will not involve myself."
Was I finally about to leave clan life behind and live a life of my own...?
"Choose. Will you inherit the seat of Clan Lord as Young Lord, or will you marry some other woman and—"
"Wait!"
I was so startled that I shot to my feet with a shout.
"C-Clan Lord? And marriage? Wasn't my eldest sister already set to be the Young Lord?"
"There is no harm in there being one more candidate."
Was this really something to say so lightly?
"You have to hear my sister's side of this too!"
"That child already knows."
I didn't know what sort of person my sister was, but she had permitted this so easily? Her seat as Clan Lord might pass to a boy years younger than she was, and she had not made an issue of it. Or perhaps Mother had simply overruled her.
"And what is this about marriage?"
"I will give you one year. In that time, you will find a woman to marry. Should you fail, I have already considered arranging a political marriage from this side."
So I might be seized by some woman I had never met, and live out my days in her keeping. Clan Lord or marriage — either way, my freedom was gone. I had to avoid them both, no matter what it took.
"F-for now, please give me time to think as well."
"Very well. I shall give you time enough."
Think. This might only be Mother brandishing a threat — a warning that she could force such things, and that I had better behave.
But if, on the other hand, I truly had to shoulder both of them...? Then this was no longer a moment for idle talk of freedom. My life could be decided just like this. That, at least, I had to stop.
"Then I'll take my leave first."
"Yes. Go on."
I slipped out of the dining hall and headed for my room.
"Tomusa, does any of this make sense to you?"
"It was not wholly without reason. You have lived as a member of the clan almost alone among them, and yet you have borne none of its duties."
"Well... that's true, but still."
I perched on the edge of the bed and started bouncing my feet.
"What do I do? Do I just flee in the middle of the night?"
"Do that, and you may never set foot inside the clan again for the rest of your life."
That wouldn't do.
"Tomusa, you're really not going to help me? You'd let me marry just any woman?"
I put on the most pitiful face I could manage and looked at her.
"My duty is to protect the young master...."
"So you won't help?"
She looked away, but she clung stubbornly to her refusal all the same.
"E-even so, I cannot...."
She absolutely would not allow it.
Tch. Would it kill her to take my side at a time like this? The trouble with Tomusa was that she would seem to stand with me, only to turn around and stand with Mother.
"For now, I'll write Ha-ryeon a letter. If it's her, she can help me."
I picked up the paper and brush set in one corner of the room, and with my positively dazzling way with words, began to pour out my woes. The gist of it was the mess I had fallen into, and a plea that she please come save me.
"But have you no thought of marriage, young master?"
"Marriage? I'll marry someday, of course. I just don't want to marry someone I don't love. And if it's a political marriage bound up in mutual interests, even less."
"Then why do you refuse the seat of Young Lord?"
"I'm already agonizing over being tied to the clan, and you want me to become Young Lord on top of that? I'd live my whole life unable to leave. The life I want is not that life, at the very least. And snatching the seat out of nowhere wouldn't be right by my eldest sister, either."
From behind me, as I wrote, Tomusa began asking this and that.
"If you cannot escape either situation... what will you do?"
"Well... if it really comes to that..."
"The two of us can just run off in the night and make a living somehow."
I turned a bright smile on her.
"Understood. Then I will help the young master as much as I am able."
Those words seemed to have pleased her quite a bit. She had stepped forward to help me.
"You mean you'll help me run away? Or that you'll keep me from becoming Young Lord, or from getting married?"
At that, Tomusa let out a soft little laugh.
"I will help with both."
"Good. Then the two of us will stop those two things somehow — and we'll draw up a plan for fleeing in the night while we're at it."
