Ripples (2)
Gaepo-dong, Gangnam District.
Set a little aside from the noise of the city, in a hush of its own, a kendo hall stood beneath a tall gate and tiled roofs: Baekungwan.
Once, this place had been holy ground for Korean swordsmanship, and true to that fame, the disciples who came out of it now held key posts in every field. Heads of major legions, celebrated Warriors of Nova Arena, even a national branch director like Oh Hyun-seok—names that could shake the industry on their own had all, at one time or another, been students of Baekungwan. Its standing had been so great that even the giants of politics and finance pulled every string they possessed just to get their children through the gate.
But the glory of that extraordinary hall was a thing of the past. Baekungwan no longer operated as a dojo. Baek Jin-hyun, the greatest swordsman in Korea—the Geomho—had declared he would take no more disciples and barred the doors, and ten years on he had not broken that iron rule even once.
Straighter and more incorruptible than anyone: the old Geomho, Baek Jin-hyun.
...So he hasn't come in two weeks.
Seated on the wooden veranda, turning a wooden sword over in his hands, his mood was thoroughly sour. The cause was that impudent uninvited guest, Go Tae-min.
A fellow who bounced all over the place. Beating him had been an absolute pleasure.
At first, of course, Baek Jin-hyun had denied it as well. Was there ever only one person, or two, seeking him out? If he so much as wished it, masters enough to fill trucks would be waiting beyond the gate this very moment, foreheads to the floor, begging for a match. He had nothing to miss.
But once Go Tae-min's visits had been cut off for more than a week, even the unhurried Baek Jin-hyun began to suffer.
Why isn't he coming?
He simply could not accept it. Any swordsman worthy of the name ought to know, better than anyone, what a blessing and what an opportunity a match against him was. And he meant to give that up? However much of a willful beast the man might be—truly?
In the end, unable to master his impatience, Baek Jin-hyun committed an eccentricity he had not indulged in for a very long time. He reached out to someone first. He, who had never once initiated contact even with the beloved disciples he had cherished all his life.
"What did he say?"
At the careful question from his second disciple, Kang Tae-san, Baek Jin-hyun cleared his throat before he answered.
"He says he will come today."
Three disciples remained at Baekungwan to attend him. The man who had guided Go Tae-min on his first visit, dressed in a crisp suit like the chief secretary of a major corporation, was the third disciple, Yoon Do-hyun. The solidly built man who had just spoken was the second, Kang Tae-san. The eldest was Kwon Mu-jin.
"Master can handle this however he likes, but frankly, I don't care for it. This is you giving personal instruction."
Kang Tae-san made no effort to hide his displeasure. His pride as a disciple of Baekungwan ran deeper than anyone's, and the sight of some drifter—no one even knew where the man had been knocking around—monopolizing their master's special attention sat very poorly with him.
The eldest, Kwon Mu-jin, was calm by comparison.
"If he's coming today, let's see him for ourselves. Master wouldn't wait like this without a reason."
Listening to his two senior brothers, Yoon Do-hyun only smiled quietly at their side.
A short while later, familiar footsteps sounded from beyond the quiet garden of Baekungwan.
"I'm heeeere."
"It has been some time."
"Haha, hasn't it? You were dying of boredom without me, right? You even called. I was so moved I nearly cried."
Go Tae-min came up wearing that shameless grin of his.
In truth, Baek Jin-hyun had meant to call the fellow to account for every accumulated offense the moment he appeared, and beat him thoroughly for it. But the instant their eyes met, his brow twitched, ever so slightly.
"Your eyes have changed a great deal."
"A few things happened this time."
Go Tae-min answered, scratching the back of his head as if embarrassed.
Baek Jin-hyun watched him in silence and swallowed a smile.
Hmm. So it was not that he grew sick of the sword and stayed away.
No—this was the face of a beast that had felt its limits to the marrow and come back all the more ravenous to break them.
Baek Jin-hyun lifted the wooden sword in his hand a fraction and smiled with a kindly air.
"It has been a while. Let us have a conversation."
A swordsman, after all, spoke of the life he had lived, and of the insights newly gained, through the sword alone.
"What? Say that again?"
Chae Geon-wook, who had been sitting in his chair, shot upright like a sprung coil in the middle of the call.
"You're asking us to take on a legion member...?"
Past the naked bewilderment in his voice, the man on the other end of the line let a thoroughly leisurely, gentle tone drift through.
"I would ask you to think of it less as a favor, and more as a good proposal. It will not be a bad arrangement for you either, Representative Chae."
The caller was none other than Oh Hyun-seok, director of the Nova Arena Korea branch. The same man who had recently turned up unannounced to inspect the legion and left everyone cold to the bone was now, out of nowhere, calling with an exceedingly awkward request.
Chae Geon-wook dry-washed his face and set his mind turning. A placement dropped in from above by someone of a branch director's standing belonged, by rights, in a major legion. Successful legions were everywhere. Why insist on forcing someone into this ghost legion, thrown together in a hurry to disguise Go Tae-min's identity?
Before that—is this even something a branch director needs to call about himself?
Scenarios flickered through his head. Was the intent to quietly dump, on some fringe newborn outfit, a problem child too much for a major legion to handle? If not that, then perhaps to plant his own person inside an easy mark of a new legion and tug the strings as he pleased.
They call it a proposal, but this is no different from a threat.
He was an information broker who had been through every kind of fire, and still he could not read the pitch-black intentions of the old snake on the other end of the line. A hasty refusal was impossible, too. If the Korea branch director used his authority to seize on some pretext against a legion that had only just been registered, that would be the greater disaster.
In the end, unable to gauge the other man's hand, his lips gone dry, Chae Geon-wook steadied his voice and asked as carefully as he could.
"Director... there are plenty of other major legions. Why come to us, of all..."
"When I stopped by for the inspection, the place struck me as decent enough. If it can be helped, I would like this person to be active in a good environment."
Oh Hyun-seok's answer was smooth to the point of shamelessness.
"Weeell... or if I were to recommend somewhere else, somewhere with a truly excellent system..."
"If that were my intention, I would hardly have called you myself, would I?"
Soft on the surface, and heavy all the way to the bone. At that single line, threaded with a smile, Chae Geon-wook had no choice but to raise the white flag.
"...Haha. Understood. Send them over, and we'll look after them with every care."
"A wise decision. I'll leave them in your care."
The moment the call ended, Chae Geon-wook's face crumpled, and he collapsed onto the desk. Even when they had founded the legion, he had never imagined that troublesome affairs of this scale would come tangled one after another.
"Aigoo... because of that walking disaster, my lifespan is shrinking in real time."
For Baek Jin-hyun, a spar was never a simple contest of strength.
To a man who had called the sword a mirror all his life, swordsmanship was, before it was a struggle to subdue an opponent, a fierce labor of self-examination: to look first into one's own ugliness and hesitation, and cut them away. In that sense, today's match with Go Tae-min was leaving him with an impression quite unlike the usual.
Hmm.
Baek Jin-hyun's eyes narrowed.
The fellow standing with the wooden sword moved far more lightly than before. It was not simply that he had grown faster. The frantic urgency of thrashing about so as to be hit a little less, the venom of needing to win no matter what—those heavy burdens seemed to have lifted a great deal. Because of it, Go Tae-min's sword cut the empty air far more freely, and with far more vigor, than it once had.
He has grown considerably.
A pleased smile touched his face. He had lived no small span of years with the sword, and he had faced a truly varied lot of people: those without talent who endured on nothing but foolish persistence; those born to heaven-sent gifts who rotted away drunk on laziness; mediocrities who, told ten things, could not make even one their own.
By and large, people longed to achieve dramatic growth in a single instant, and turned their faces from how much vicious effort, how much bone-paring pain, lay in wait behind that sweet fruit. But look at the youth before his eyes. He did not bow and scrape and beg to be taught, and yet he was hardly without grit—taking that merciless beating and still coming back on his own two feet. And in a brief gap, that same fellow had thrown himself against an unseen wall and returned having ground those sharp edges down at last.
There will be a pleasure in raising him.
For that reason, Baek Jin-hyun meant to properly impart a single technique to this commendable uninvited guest today.
There was the faintest shift of his shoulder, and the tip of the wooden sword vanished like a mirage. A trajectory minute in the extreme, and yet one that sealed every path of escape. The Go Tae-min of before would have been rolling across the ground before he could even read it.
But Go Tae-min narrowed his eyes and twisted his body on instinct. In that fractional instant, his wooden sword sought out Baek Jin-hyun's line as if it had become a magnet.
Thwack!
A dull scrape of friction broke the stillness. Go Tae-min's wooden sword, which had seemed planted where it stood, blocked Baek Jin-hyun's blow with uncanny timing.
"...!"
Baek Jin-hyun's brows jerked hard. The rebound traveling from the sword's tip—a resistance dull, but unmistakable—climbed the old swordsman's wrist.
Hoh. He blocked this...
He had fully expected the satisfying crack of impact against the fellow's shoulder, or the crown of his head. Instead, in that split instant, Go Tae-min had raised his wooden sword and knocked the attack aside. The deflection had been a near thing, his stance gone ragged, but a block was a block.
What in the world happened in so short a time?
Even as he swallowed his admiration, Baek Jin-hyun began to press far harder, determined to see the bottom of just how far the fellow had grown before coming back.
Thwack! Thwack-thwack! Thwack!
Sword strikes cold and keen enough to tear to shreds even the fallen leaves scattering through the garden. The great Geomho's wooden sword poured down without leaving so much as an afterimage.
The three disciples watching in breathless silence could not contain their inward shock. They were not Baek Jin-hyun, but they too had trained and tempered the sword all their lives. With their master's blade driving in earnest like this, there was no way they could fail to recognize the level of the youth before them, clinging on with everything he had.
The eyes of Kang Tae-san, who had privately found the special instruction distasteful, shook wide with disbelief.
Just now, Master looked like he meant it. And he blocked that?
The eldest, Kwon Mu-jin, arms folded, followed Go Tae-min's movements with a calm but razor-edged gaze and clicked his tongue inwardly.
At that age, already...
Only Yoon Do-hyun smiled quietly at the side, occupied with the same practical concern as always.
Around what time should I order the burgers today.
Go Tae-min, for his part, was caught in a similar astonishment.
What.
Barely fending off Baek Jin-hyun's wooden sword as it crashed in like lightning, he tilted his head. A shock numb enough to split his grip came rolling up his arms, but his nerves were fixed entirely on a strange sensation writhing inside his own body.
Why is that energy still left inside me...?