The Possessor
We left that rather heavy conversation behind us, and by the time the sky had begun to dim, Soye and I had, thankfully, reached a small village before the sun was entirely gone.
Evening had come on with us, so we stepped into the nearest inn in sight. We took seats across from each other at a table that still had room to spare, and a waiter approached to take our order.
"Welcome! What'll it be—!?"
He had started in with the usual greeting, then caught sight of Soye sitting opposite me and froze where he stood.
Soye was beautiful in her ordinary, bright way, but this blunt, world-weary version of her was breathtaking enough to steal the air from your lungs. The trouble, of course, was that she did not look especially pleased to be wearing that face.
"Does this inn have a dish it's particularly proud of?"
"Y-yes!? Ah, yes. O-our dongpo pork is the best thing we make."
"Yeah? Then one order of dongpo pork, and... Soye, you...?"
"...I'll have the dongpo pork too..."
The waiter was about to rush the order back to the kitchen when Soye called after him.
"Um..."
"Y-yes!"
"And a cup of yellow wine, please."
"Ah... right away!!"
"Soye?"
She had ordered drink without so much as a word to me. When I turned a questioning look on her, she only smiled.
"I just felt like it today. You'll drink with me, won't you?"
"Haa... fine."
I wanted to stop her. After the talk we'd had that afternoon, though, refusing felt wrong. If she only drank enough for a light buzz, it would be all right.
I had just given in to her wish that we match cups when the waiter returned with the yellow wine.
Yellow wine. Fifteen to twenty percent, near enough to the strength of soju back home. Mild, as Chinese liquors went... but if it was Soye, who had never been able to hold her drink...
"You sure about this?"
"Don't worry. I've gotten older. A bottle or two of yellow wine is nothing to me now."
"Really...?"
She insisted her tolerance had improved. I didn't believe her for a moment. Six years ago, the wine in a single teacup had been enough to lay her out flat.
One bottle ought to be fine.
However weak her head for liquor, she was still of the Tang Clan. She wouldn't go down after a single bottle. So I told myself, and I tipped my cup with her without a worry in the world—not knowing, then, how badly I had overestimated her.
"Soye. Come on, sit up."
"Hee~, gaga!"
We hadn't even gotten through a few cups, and already her eyes were glazed past saving. The Soye who had claimed a bottle or two was nothing had vanished. What clung to my side was a Soye dead drunk before she had so much as finished one.
At some point she had slid into the seat beside me and wrapped herself around me.
"I love you... gaga!"
"Yeah. I love you too."
Her tongue had gone completely slack, and she couldn't hold her own head up; it kept nodding forward. She was utterly gone.
"Haa... We're staying here tonight."
One look at her and I knew moving on was hopeless. I called the waiter over.
"We'd like a room for the night. Got any left?"
"Y-yes! Shall I prepare two?"
"No. Just one."
"Yes... understood."
I ignored the faintly disappointed look on his face, gathered Soye up in my arms, and followed him up the stairs.
The room he showed us wasn't large, but it was snug enough for the two of us to pass a night. I laid her carefully on the bed and was taking a slow look around when the waiter, who still hadn't left, spoke up.
"I-is there anything else you need?"
"We're fine. You can go."
"Yes, understood."
Once I was sure he had withdrawn, I looked back at the bed. Soye lay there drunk, smiling at nothing in particular.
I could have forced her sober the way I used to, circulating her energy until she woke, but she had heard hard things today. Better to let her sleep it off.
Washing a foul mood away with wine isn't the worst thing.
When I was certain she had drifted off, I moved to the window and started on what remained of the bottle. I was drinking the half-finished yellow wine by moonlight when a strange presence brushed my senses.
"You can't do that here!"
"Shut up! I could start by killing you."
"Eek!!"
It sounded as if the waiter had gotten into it with someone outside. I meant to let it pass—it had nothing to do with me—but only for a moment. That unfamiliar presence was drawing toward the room where Soye and I were.
"Haa~. And I was just starting to feel it..."
Whoever was coming, it wasn't for any good reason. I ran my internal energy through a full cycle and burned the drunkenness clean out of me, then shut the window against intruders, closed the door carefully so Soye wouldn't wake, and stepped out. I had left a thread of energy in a qi barrier as I went. It would hold off a certain degree of intrusion.
Out in the corridor, the owner of that presence showed himself: a huge, vicious-looking man, his face buried in beard, with a dozen or so subordinates closing in behind him. I spoke first.
"And what are you?"
"This the one?"
"Yes. I believe so."
The bearded giant checked with the man beside him that I was the right target, then leveled the axe in his grip.
"I'll keep this short. Hand over the woman you've got."
"What?"
"Didn't hear me? Give me the woman."
"Why would I? If you've got a problem with my Soye, you can say it to me."
"Why~? Haa—hahahaha!!"
He burst out laughing, and the men behind him laughed along. After a long while of it, the mirth dropped off his face.
"Seems you still haven't grasped the situation. A woman like that's wasted on a bastard like you. So hand her over."
"Ha, fuck. I wondered what this was about, and it's maggots like you crawling out of the woodwork."
"Don't fret. I'll take very good care of your woman. In bed, of course."
"You piece of shit."
He wasn't worth another word. I drove my internal energy up to the sixth star.
Violet light flooded his eyes. Lightning of the same hue spun around his entire body.
Before any of them could react, I drove my fist into the skull of the man who looked to be their leader and sent him hurtling. He flew, then clutched his bleeding nose and stared at me in blank disbelief, as if he hadn't even registered what had just been done to him.
"Fighting in here would be a nuisance for everyone else. We're going outside. And every one of you is dying by my hand."
A crack. A wet crunch.
"S-spare me!!"
"Shut up."
"Aaaagh!!"
It didn't take long. I put every last one of them down and stepped out of the inn. I had held my strength back on purpose, worried about wrecking the place, but there was no reason for that anymore.
Dragged outside, they seemed to see their future clearly enough. The man who had looked like their leader began begging for his life in the most wretched voice.
"I-I'm sorry. P-please, just my life..."
"Bullshit. In front of me, you said what about Soye? That you'd take good care of her? In bed? The moment those words left your mouth, none of you had a future."
"Eek! Th-that's not it! The truth is..."
"Just die."
I decided there was no need to hear another word, and I went to blow his head apart. More precisely, I tried.
A blast rolled out, incomparably louder than anything inside the inn. By the sound alone it should have been a clean overkill, but the result forced a frown out of me.
"And what are you."
"Now, now. Let's calm down a little."
The sand kicked up by the blow settled, and the one who had stopped my attack came into view. A woman, her face painted like a performer in traditional opera, had caught the strike on a single arm, looking entirely at her ease. I stared at her with my brow furrowed, and she was the one to speak first.
"Please don't look at me like that. He may not seem like much, but he's a rather capable subordinate of mine."
"And that's my problem?"
"Don't be so stiff. I have a feeling you and I will be seeing quite a lot of each other."
"I have no desire to see you again."
"Hear me out first. You might change your mind."
I had already judged her not worth listening to and was about to press the attack when words I couldn't ignore left her mouth.
A tremendous crack of ruptured air tore through the night. For all that sound, my leg had stopped a hair short of her.
Seeing me freeze, she smiled a smile I didn't like at all.
"So you're finally in the mood to talk."
"Fuck... Fine. Say your piece."
"Your mouth is rather foul, which I dislike, but I'll forgive that much."
"Bullshit."
The curse was crude, and honestly it was the only thing that could bleed off the anger I felt just then. The moment she played the card called possessor, I could no longer afford to ignore a word she said. She knew it. That was why she could stand in front of me so unguarded.
"Let's change locations. This hardly seems a suitable place for a conversation."
"We go back inside the inn."
"Not my favorite choice of venue, but very well. You have company with you, so I'll concede this much."
Swallowing my unease as best I could, she and I stepped back into the inn—into what might, in the days to come, prove one of the most troublesome ill-fated ties of my life.