Blood & Flag (3)
After his talk with Chae Geon-wook, Go Tae-min fell into a long, uneasy study of the transparent lines filling his vision. If the mana Chae Geon-wook had described was truly a real energy, then these strange lines before his eyes were the most likely shape it took.
He went to work at once. He thrust his hands into the empty air and clutched desperately at the white threads drifting there; when that failed, he tried cramming them into his mouth, and even dragging them roughly up his nose. Nothing came of it. The white threads only circled like ghosts, passing indifferently through every attempt, and not a single physical interaction occurred.
"This isn't even playing hard to get."
After days of stubborn effort, Go Tae-min finally let the thing go. Burning time on lines he couldn't catch was a bad investment. Instead, he headed for a nearby kendo hall to prepare for his upcoming pro-league debut.
Once he actually tried it, swinging a sword was more fun than he'd expected. But that was as far as it went. To swing faster, and more accurately, he needed proper fundamentals.
The moment he pushed open the dojo door, though, he had to doubt his own ears.
"A million and a half won a month?"
The manager at the consultation desk nodded as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Yes. That's the base tuition. Equipment rental is separate, protective-gear maintenance is separate, and that figure doesn't include the add-on for the Nova Arena specialized curriculum."
The world had lost its mind. Nova Arena's worldwide craze had sent the value of cold-weapon martial arts through the roof, and once that modern colosseum became a symbol of wealth and fame, the weapons-training market was hit by an inflation no one had seen before.
A million and a half won. For people trying to make a living in Nova Arena, it might have been a worthwhile investment—especially with pro-league fight purses in mind. But Go Tae-min couldn't bring himself to touch the enrollment form. Burned into his head was the image of his mother, a building cleaner her whole life, grinding through an entire month just to bring home that same million and a half. Setting fire to blood money like that for a single month of lessons was, to a man who had lived like a weed, as good as a sin.
"......I'll come back another time."
"Of course. Once you've thought it over, call us anytime. There's a waiting list these days, so spots fill up fast."
The manager tipped his head with the easy smile of a salesman moving expensive goods. As Go Tae-min turned and walked out, a sharp kiai stabbed into his ear.
"Damn crooks."
The moment he stepped outside the building, he folded the promotional pamphlet with a crisp snap and jammed it into his back pocket, figuring he could at least use it later as a coaster for cup ramen.
"What, does gold dust fall off the tip of the blade? A million and a half? How many burgers is that?"
In the end, the place he went was the quiet hill behind the neighborhood. Standing in a deserted clearing, he felt a cool mountain wind brush his cheek.
He had never formally learned swordsmanship. The essence of the sword as a weapon, though—that, Go Tae-min understood more precisely than anyone. A sword was nothing but a length of iron drawn out long, the most primitive tool ever devised to kill a man at a distance your hand couldn't reach. Thrust first, and you live. Miss, and you die. Learned on a battlefield rather than in a sport, the definition of a sword was that simple, and that vicious.
Go Tae-min took out his phone and skimmed a video on basic kendo.
"Eggs, my ass. If somebody takes it off you, you die. You grip it tight."
He grumbled, but he studied the YouTuber's hands with care. In his operative days, gripping a dagger or a machete had been nothing more than not letting go and driving it in deep. A long-reach sword was different. The slightest change in the angle of the wrist, or in the strength of the grip, completely rewrote the path of the tip.
Go Tae-min copied the motion on the screen and took the hilt—left hand supporting the end, right hand light beneath the guard—then stepped in time with the YouTuber's footwork. A soft slide, then a tap.
"Oof. This actually pulls the calves."
The steps forward and back looked simple, but keeping his center low and the distance constant burned more stamina than he'd expected. He didn't stop. There was the satisfaction of having saved that fortune of a million and a half won, yes—but more than that, just imagining the unbelievable cuts that would come out of him once he properly shaved these fundamentals down was enough to make the corner of his mouth twitch.
Whoosh—!
The sound of tearing air rang out across the quiet hill. Once. Ten times. A hundred.
"Hah... hah......"
Sweat ran from the point of his chin and struck the dirt.
Go Tae-min locked onto the explanation and swung as if in a trance, shaking the useless tension out of his shoulders and concentrating on nothing but the shortest straight line. After he had been at it for a long while, the tip—which had been wandering however it pleased—began to trace a steady path, and the sound of it cutting the air grew sharper.
He still wasn't satisfied. However clean the trajectory had become, this was only playing with air. What mattered was whether that accuracy would hold when the blade actually met something.
"......I'll only know once I drive it in."
For a man of real combat, verification was mandatory. Go Tae-min glanced around, picked up a thick log lying nearby, stood it on a suitable boulder, and reset his grip. It was time to see whether this self-taught result—bought by defending that fortune of a million and a half—would hold up in practice.
"Hup."
He let out a short breath and drove the sword straight down at the exact center of the log.
Shhk—clang!
Two sharp cracks burst out almost at once and rang through the silent hill. The sense that something had gone wrong climbed his wrist before it ever reached his brain: a vibration past tingling, all the way to numb, a recoil hard enough to set his grip shuddering.
"......Huh?"
Go Tae-min made a dazed sound and looked down at his own hand. He was still clutching the hilt, but the blade that ought to have been attached to it was snapped in half. He dropped his gaze, and the situation came clear at a glance. The log he had stood on the rock was split into two pieces as cleanly as if he'd laid a ruler along it, the halves rolling across the ground.
The problem was that his skill had improved far too much in far too little time—so much that comparing him to that YouTuber would have been an insult. The sword that sheared through the wood couldn't shed its acceleration, and it slammed head-on into the solid boulder braced beneath. A dark shard spun up into the air and hit the ground with a clink.
Go Tae-min's mouth fell open, blank. The broken blade caught the moonlight and glittered, pitiful.
"......I'm fucked."
I came trudging down the mountain and headed for my senior's office. The lights were still on at this hour, so his business was clearly booming again today.
"Hyung, I wrecked my sword. Is there any way we can—"
The whine that had been about to leap out the moment I opened the door slid straight back down my throat. There were people in the office besides my senior: three men in black suits, seated on the sofa. They gave off a very bad smell. From their builds and their eyes, they weren't neighborhood thugs.
"......Ah. You had guests."
I stopped, awkwardly scratching the back of my head, and the middle-aged man in the seat of honor rose slowly from the sofa. He looked me up and down, then gave my senior a smooth nod.
"Just as the rumors said. The talk that you can pull an answer even out of a dead man's mouth wasn't an exaggeration. I'll see you again soon."
"Not at all. Providing information worth the money is my job."
"Until next time, then."
The middle-aged man tipped his head with gentlemanly ease, gathered the others, and the lot of them poured out of the office. A strange stillness hung in the room until the click of dress shoes faded all the way to the end of the corridor. I didn't loosen the tension until they were completely out of sight.
Nothing good comes of getting tangled up with men like that.
That particular reek of blood, the kind given off by people who treated getting it on their hands as routine. The instincts from my black-ops days were flashing a warning light.
"Oh, Tae-min. Good timing."
"You look insanely busy, though. And who were the guys who just left?"
My senior took off his glasses, set them on the desk, and scrubbed a dry hand over his face. Several monitors were up at once, and between all the typing he looked extremely busy.
"Good news. The legion's been established. The name is Veil. I looked it up, and there are quite a few legions with the same name. Something that common is perfect for hiding who you are."
"Oh, nice. Veil......"
No name could have suited us better, moving as we did in the shadow.
He tapped the monitor and went on.
"And the league—like we talked about, I registered you for the American pro league. The Japanese league is smaller, the crowds are thinner, and the fight money isn't much."
"Right. A man ought to swim in the big water."
The time difference meant I'd have to fight at dawn, which nagged at me a little, but I didn't really care. If they paid well enough, I was willing to get up out of a dead sleep and start cutting.
"There's bad news too."
"What is it? They won't let you fight in a mask over there?"
"No. An offer came in from the NAA."
"Eminem?"
"NAA. Nova Arena's American branch, you idiot."
At that, I brightened.
"Really? An offer already? That's huge."
My senior's face, though, was not particularly pleased.
"There's a catch. It isn't a formal offer. It's an SNF—a Short-Notice Fight. A replacement offer."
"What's that?"
"When a Warrior who was already booked drops out from a sudden injury or personal business, they offer the spot to another Warrior as a patch. Compared with the other participants, the prep time is absurdly short, so the risk is enormous."
Normally, he said, you got about a month to prepare. The offer that had come to me was only a week out—not even enough time to properly tune my condition, let alone train for real. I was glad to hear it anyway.
"So what if it's a replacement offer. Faster is better."
I'd just snapped a sword on that hill and opened up another hole for money to drain through, so this was a proposal I didn't even have to think about. Even at my crisp answer, my senior's expression didn't ease.
"And... it's Match Four."
"Match Four? Isn't that a low number on the card?"
"Yeah."
I frowned.
What. Don't tell me they shaved the fight money too.
"This is my read. I don't think the NAA is looking at you all that kindly."
"Why would the NAA?"
"You came up undefeated out of the Japanese league. And right now you're drawing attention all over the world, so I think they mean to burn through the Ak-gwi drawing card before the novelty wears off. In the most provocative way they can."
His voice was heavier than usual.
"Americans have a pathological pride that their league is the best in the world. Then some Eastern nobody they've never heard of comes up undefeated from the Japanese league? From their side, it isn't that you're skilled. It's that the Japanese league was weak, and you were sipping easy honey."
I folded my arms and stared at the screen. I had a rough sense of how this had gone.
"So they want to use me, now that I've got a bit of a name, as a sacrifice to inflate the price of their own prospects. That it?"
"Exactly. That's why they slotted you into Match Four. Before the main card starts—at the moment the crowd's blood ought to be boiling hottest—they want a flashy slaughter show. And you're the sacrifice in that show."
When he finished, he stole a glance at me. I wiped the smile that had been sitting at the corner of my mouth.
Hm.
Honestly, it didn't feel good. Even a man who had been through every kind of hell didn't enjoy being treated as a sacrifice to his face. It stung the pride. When I frowned and said nothing, my senior seemed to think I was actually angry. He cleared his throat and added a careful line.
"......In exchange, they came in pretty hard on the base pay. I told you, right? Come up on an undefeated promotion and the base is ten thousand dollars?"
"......"
"You start at twenty thousand. On a win, they pay an additional one hundred percent of base, and your appearance fee for the next match goes up thirty percent. The terms aren't bad, are they?"
I smoothed my brow in a single breath and seized his hand in both of mine. The murderous stillness from a moment ago was gone without a trace.
"......Huh?"
"Their American pride? I can stuff that full for them. A sacrifice? Hand me the money and I'll do it artistically. I'm ready to climb into the capsule right now and die for them."
I smiled so brightly it was hard to believe I'd been stone-faced a second ago, and my senior shook his head as if he couldn't believe it.
"You weren't mad?"
"Come on, Hyung. Getting angry in front of money isn't professional. And I am a true professional."
"......Still, it could hurt your pride."
"That was back when my pride was worth ten thousand dollars. At twenty thousand, plus a hundred percent win bonus, my pride has already boarded a plane and crossed the Pacific. It's probably saying hello in English by now. Hello, money!"
I hummed as I got to my feet. Twenty thousand dollars was a fortune—some thirty million won. Win, and the victory bonus paid me another thirty million on top of that. Of course I felt good.
My senior looked at me as if I were something revolting.
"......You're not going to sell me off for money someday too, are you?"