The Uninvited Guest (7)

So places like this existed in Gangnam.

Land here cost so much he had assumed the neighborhood was nothing but gilded towers packed shoulder to shoulder. Baekungwan stood in Gaepo-dong, in a pocket of the city where the urban noise had politely stepped aside.

Strange. Old trees leaned their crowns over the wall, and the roof tiles lay in clean, quiet courses. Staring at them, he felt as if he were walking into some minister's estate out of a historical drama. The high gate and the neatly stacked wall held a peculiar presence amid the forest of buildings.

"Excuse me."

He stepped inside with care. Part of him hoped a white-bearded elder in a billowing robe would appear and demand to know who he was. A moment later, the man who actually emerged betrayed that hope in spectacular fashion.

"Yes. What brings you here?"

The voice that answered his belonged to a man dressed in an immaculate suit. No robe. A shirt creased to a razor's edge, and a tie besides. For a second the bewildered thought struck him that he had walked not into a dojo but into the secretarial office of some conglomerate.

"Uh, I, well… that is…"

The words jammed in his throat. Formal welcomes and ceremony-heavy atmospheres had always been a weak point of his. If the man had simply asked who he was and leveled a blade at him, he would have been far more at ease.

"You were invited? By whom?"

"That's, uh—uhhhhh…"

"Ah. Director Oh Hyun-seok sent word. We were expecting you. Please, go right in."

"…?"

I didn't say anything. How did he know?

He set the confusion aside and followed the path the man opened for him.

"Whoa…"

The moment he passed through one more gate, the view opened wide. Gray asphalt was gone without a trace. Underfoot ran a tidy dirt path, and green thickets filled every side. A single wall away, the noise of the outside had been wiped clean. The disconnect nearly stole his wits.

Only for a moment. As he walked deeper he mapped the place the way he always did—where the gates opened onto the outside, where a man could hide in a blind spot, how many people were inside this space.

He had just reached the far edge of the garden.

Huh?

An old man sat in a weathered wooden chair, idly taking the sun. The sight stopped him cold.

Dangerous.

Instinct from his years as an agent warned him not to go any closer. Because the man was too dangerous? No. The opposite. He felt nothing from the old man at all.

He had felt this uncanny absence only once before, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠when he crossed paths with Zhang Wei, the legendary Chinese black-ops agent. The man he had brushed past in the borderlands had been a phantom in the flesh. Show him your back, and you had better be ready to die. His presence had been missing to a degree that raised the hair on your neck.

Slip up today, and I might die.

His mouth went bone-dry. An old wooden sword lay across the old man's knees, and beyond those closed lids there was no presence whatsoever.

Then the old man slowly opened his eyes.

"Finished your looking, have you?"

"…"

"Your aura was so grim it dragged me out of my sleep."

Eyes with not a trace of cloud in them—clear past clarity, transparent enough to sting—turned on him. That gaze passed once over his whole body, and he felt as if everything he had kept buried was being stripped bare.

The old man gave a short laugh and spoke.

"Do you know that the eyes hold a great many things?"

"…"

"Yours are truly… noisy. All around us is this quiet, and yet your eyes never rest. They cut me, stab me, and carve out a road."

He rose from the chair and came forward slowly. With every step, that slight frame seemed to grow vast.

"People spend their whole lives trying to lay on another coat of something. But listen. What matters is not what you leave behind. It is what you are able to cast off."

"…"

"And you… you are not noisy because you possess too much. You have shed everything that could be shed, and what remains—every last piece of it—has an edge, and those edges keep tapping at my skin. A curious thing. How does a body with no formal learning give off a killing intent this smooth?"

At that, he had no choice but to speak.

"What do you mean by that?"

Shed everything that could be shed, and only the remainder left? No learning, and yet the killing intent is smooth? The words were murky. One thing, though, was certain. The old man in front of him had seen straight through him.

At the question, the old man chuckled and lifted the wooden sword.

"A swordsman speaks with his sword. Well? Will you listen to the sound of mine?"

Vivid red lines drew themselves across his retinas.

Seven trajectories formed around the old man. Most opponents produced one or two at most, and even Christopher had topped out at three. Seven was an absurd number. Worse, the lines wove into one another and sealed every route he might have used to escape.

He had no choice. Before they could finish forming, he raised his sword and chose to block.

Clang—!

Wood ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠met wood, and his grip went numb. The strength behind the blow was impossible to believe of a man in his seventies. It felt like a boulder rolling off a mountain to crush his sword. A counterattack was unthinkable. He poured everything he had into meeting the next strike, and the next, as they poured in without pause.

Or he tried to.

But—

Thwack!

"…!"

He clutched his head and rolled across the ground. Somewhere in the exchange, the old man's wooden sword had come down on the crown of his skull. Pain like lightning lanced from his head to the soles of his feet.

Agh, that hurts… What was that just now?

The old man smiled, perfectly calm.

"Your eyes were so loud you missed the path the sword actually took. Fifty years of stillness is hardly so light a thing."

"…"

He steadied his spinning head and replayed what had just happened. He was sure he had blocked every trajectory the old man created. And yet the wooden sword had struck his crown. Which meant the final attack had never been shown to him by the red lines.

While he sat frozen, still unable to shake off the shock, the old man lowered his sword and spoke quietly.

"You look as if you cannot make sense of it."

"…Yes."

He had to admit it. It felt as if the answer sheet he had trusted absolutely had just been thrown out whole.

The old man laughed under his breath and went on.

"Nothing strange about it. I pared away the greed to fill myself, and pared it away again, until the sword simply knew its own road ahead of me."

"The sword… already knew its own road?"

He could not understand it. A sword was only a tool that carried the will of the one who swung it. For the sword itself to know the way—he had never heard anything like that in any lecture on the internet.

"Chase only the right answer, and you lose the essence. No need to make it difficult. A trajectory whittled down over fifty years was merely a little shorter than your calculation."

Only a little shorter than my calculation?

He reset his stance. His hand tightened on the wooden sword. He could not comprehend fifty years, but the trajectory that had just touched his crown—he wanted to catch that, whatever it took. Whether it was a wrong answer mocking his answer sheet, or another right answer on a level he had not yet reached, it did not matter.

"…May I ask for one more?"

At the short request, the old man smiled. He lifted the wooden sword again, unhurried, and the spar began once more.

Unfortunately, a second attempt changed very little. Calling it a match was embarrassing.

"You're rushing. I told you to shed, and you're trying to carve it off by force. That is not shedding. That is breaking."

"Your sword is still screaming. You want to win, you want to land the blow, you want to pierce… How is a sword supposed to find its own road when it wails that loudly?"

"Do not look with your eyes and then swing. Read your fingertips first. What you need to cut is not me. It is that impatience of yours."

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

Crown, shoulder, wrist, flank. The old man's wooden sword rapped every corner of his body. The sword in his own hands never once touched the old man. It was a perfect, overwhelming defeat, so complete that the red lines writhing madly across his retinas might as well not have been there.

"Hah—hah, hah… I think I'm gonna die…"

In the end he collapsed flat, sweat pouring off him. He had thought his stamina, at least, was something he could trust. Swinging a sword with everything he had for a full hour was apparently too much to ask.

And more than that—

I can't even touch him.

A metallic taste of blood spread through his mouth. If the old man had been even slightly serious, he would have died several times over. A branch picked up off the roadside instead of a wooden sword would have ended the same way.

Then the old man spoke again. The voice was so clear and untroubled it was hard to believe they had been sparring for an hour.

"It's been a while since dust settled on my sleeves. You searched for the path so desperately that this old ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠man forgot his age and took up the sword."

Not a drop of sweat on him, he gave the wooden sword a light swing and rested it on his shoulder. The cold pressure that had overwhelmed him a moment ago was gone. What remained was the face of a neighborhood grandfather who had just pulled off a mean little prank.

"From now on, don't stand on ceremony. Come whenever you feel like it. Thanks to you, a drowsy afternoon snapped wide awake."

"Huh? Really? I can?"

Still sprawled on the ground, he jerked only his head up to ask. His whole body was screaming from the beating, and yet, strangely, his heart burned hotter. Even after being broken so thoroughly, the desire to stand opposite this old man again came first.

The reason he had been helpless today was simple.

It wasn't that the red lines failed to appear.

The old man's attack was simply so fast that the wooden sword moved in the same instant the trajectory was drawn. A speed at which the very logic of seeing and then reacting ceased to exist. Every strike that had come before was only a precise sketch laid down for that final blow.

No wonder he's the best in the country.

Honestly, he wanted it. If he could follow that trajectory himself—no, if someday he could imitate even the trailing edge of that sword—then he could take however many more beatings it required.

He kept the old man company on the wooden veranda for half an hour or so, then bowed to him with proper courtesy.

"Thank you truly for inviting me today."

The respect came from the heart. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠The old man seemed pleased with the attitude. He laughed, a low hearty sound, and tossed the wooden sword into a corner. Somewhere along the way he had dropped all formality with him.

"Enough of the courtesies. If you haven't eaten yet, will you share a meal?"

From the air of the tile-roofed house, he had naturally expected something like a neat, formal Korean course.

"Ah… yes. What's the menu?"

"Hamburgers."

"…What?"

"What, you don't want one? There's a place nearby that makes them absurdly well. I'm a regular."

The choice was so far from what he had expected that he nearly let out an empty laugh. It was a menu that did not belong in this old-fashioned garden at all. He answered without bothering to hide the growl of his stomach.

"I'll eat. I actually love hamburgers."

After Go Tae-min had gone, the garden of Baekungwan, noisy for a while, settled back into its old hush.

The old man sat deep in a backed chair at the end of the veranda. Lost in thought, his gaze rested on the dirt, scuffed with the messy footprints of the spar.

Then the man in the suit, the one who had first guided Go Tae-min in, approached without a sound.

"Master. Now that you've met him, what did you think?"

The question was short, but a great deal sat inside it. It was exceedingly rare for the old man to cross swords with anyone in person, rarer still to share a meal.

Instead of answering, the old man let a small laugh out into the empty air. The cold pressure that had unsettled Go Tae-min earlier was gone. In its place, something lively flickered in his eyes—the look of a child who had found an interesting toy.

"For a while, an uninvited guest will be coming and going as if this were his own house."

A faint smile touched the suited man's mouth.

"You've taken a liking to him, then. I'm glad."

The old man closed his eyes again and savored the quiet of the garden. Left in his mind, like an afterimage, was the strange movement of the young man from earlier—the way he had twisted his head on pure instinct before the sword ever arrived.

From that day on, Go Tae-min visited Baekungwan three more times.

Each visit ran in nearly the same stamped pattern. He crossed swords with Baek Jin-hyeon in the yard and was beaten helplessly by a wooden sword that flew the instant a red trajectory formed. When the hour-long spar ended, he sat on the veranda reeking of pain-relief patches and was treated to a hamburger.

The days he did not go were just as simple. Physical training in the morning. In the afternoon, a review of the spar with Baek Jin-hyeon. In his head he redrew those red lines tens of thousands of times. It was the work of carving into his body a sense that was not see-and-react, but already be there.

He gave himself to nothing but training, and before he knew it, match day had arrived.

"I'm heading out. Gonna go make a pile of money."

A red glow wavered beneath the Demon mask, and the robe was black as pitch. Go Tae-min looked himself over in the mirror and gave Waldstein, sheathed at his waist, a couple of taps.

Chae Geon-wook, who had been watching with his hands clasped behind his back, spoke.

"Don't push yourself too hard. I'll be watching too."

"Don't worry. I didn't train that hard just to fail to break even."

A low mechanical hum rose, and the capsule hatch closed smoothly. Then, as before, a voice flowed out. His vision went black, and his consciousness was drawn somewhere far away.

When he opened his eyes, a new scene lay before him.

He stood inside an old wooden building, a little larger than Chae Geon-wook's workshop. From far off came the low, dull toll of a bell. Ten people were present, Go Tae-min among them. Nine pairs of eyes passed briefly up and down his frame. Under those edged stares, he naturally adjusted his grip on the sword's hilt.

A clear chime rang.

Go Tae-min gave the window a small nod.

Infiltrating a prison… It felt like meeting his old field of expertise after a long time.

He was still reading through the mission when it hit him.

The one I have to save is… huh?

For an instant, Go Tae-min's eyes trembled. It felt as if his breath had stopped. For a long while he could not look away from the photograph.

A youthful face in its early twenties. A clean, sharply drawn jaw. Eyes so clear their depth was impossible to measure.

…Lee Jong-hyuk.

A name he could never forget turned over in his mouth. The man in the photograph looked far too much like his old partner.