Crescent Moon
I was confident I could win the fight. Dragging a surrender out of him—that was the problem.
There has to be a way.
First I needed the right tool, and the blade in his hand would do nicely. I also had to bleed his stamina down until he couldn't put up a real resistance, and for that the best method was to let him spend his own strength. For a while, all I had to do was take the hits. Swinging a sword that big had to burn an absurd amount of energy.
No need to close in first.
He was holding his distance, wary, watching like a hawk for the moment I slipped inside the blade's reach.
"You know, if you just offered your neck clean, that might be the less painful way to go."
He wasn't going to indulge the conversation all the way through. Which meant that sooner or later, win or lose, the impatience would get to him.
"So that's how you want it. Fine. No more holding back!"
Come on, then.
"Hah!"
A deliberate shout. No need to flinch. Sure enough, the cuts stayed cautious—he was braced for me to dive in at any second. So I dodged. A light step back. The half-hearted downward slashes kept coming, and he was clever enough to mix the angles. Didn't matter. I gave ground a little at a time and slipped every one.
I was running out of room. The spectators edged back here and there, reading the air, but they weren't doing it for me. They were afraid of getting cut themselves. Either way, the wall of bodies retreated a few beats too slow, which meant I had to start slipping sideways as well. That was the dangerous part.
"Haht!"
He was finding his rhythm now. His blood was up, and the attacks came faster. The quicker he swung, the harder he was to dodge—but the slower he was to recover the blade, because he was banking the pull and spending it all on the extension. I matched him, slipping each cut just a little slower than I could have. Let him think my stamina was fading.
"Boo!"
His attacks were settling into a pattern. Once a man finds a rhythm, he can't stop.
"You've got him in the corner!"
"Finish it!"
No more room behind me. The spectators had cleared out long ago, and what waited at my back was a wall.
"Cut him down!"
The recovery of that blade had slowed until you could see it. He was spent.
"This is the end!"
Yeah. It was. His turn, anyway.
Thuk.
I kicked the incoming sword lightly aside and slipped inside.
"Hk—!?"
Every opening he had was laid bare. I didn't take one. I gave him time to fall back, and the startled shift of his weight carried him backward. Leave him like that and he'd simply go down, and there was still plenty of space behind him.
Not yet.
I snatched the wrist of the hand on the sword, and his balance tipped forward again.
Tat!
He barely caught himself on his back foot. Now for one hard shove the other way. I drove my shoulder into his solar plexus.
"Keuk!"
No time to reset. He scrambled backward in a rush and, in a single breath, was shoved nearly to the wall the spectators had made. Through the gaps in the crowd, I could see the boss.
"……Hm."
The instant our eyes met—
"Hah!"
He must have thought I'd looked away. A wide horizontal cut, wound up from the hip. An all-or-nothing killing stroke, nothing held back.
Got you.
I bent my knees and threw my upper body far back.
"Uk—!?"
The superiority of being a short kid. The slash found nothing but empty air. He knew it, but the momentum was already his.
Tak.
I planted both hands and braced the body that was tipping over. In that instant the edge shaved past, right in front of my eyes, and his wrist came down to just above my toes.
Now.
I hooked the wrist with both feet and shoved off the ground with both hands in opposite directions. The recoil spun me.
"Aaaagh!"
He wasn't going to drop the sword over something like this. Feet don't grip worth a damn, so the two of them wrapped around his wrist slipped and skated. Didn't matter. The inertia of the swing was still in him. I kept rolling the same direction, feet locked around that wrist.
"Urgh!"
He was dragged along and went down. I tucked my knees in tight and hung entirely off his arm, rolling and rolling. They say an alligator does the same thing—clamps onto its prey and spins. A death roll.
"Aaaaagh!"
Clamp down properly and a single revolution would tear the arm off, but my body isn't an alligator's jaws. Spin long enough and the grip slips, catches, and slips again. For causing pain, though, it was plenty.
"Graaah!"
He thrashed, desperate to shake me off, and somewhere in it the sword stopped mattering. He let go, limp. Not yet, though.
Hold on a little longer.
I forced the blade to stay hooked in his hand, as if he were still gripping it. I hadn't reached the spot I wanted. This roll was never only about taking the sword.
I have to force a surrender.
Even now, choking on his own breath, he wasn't crying out. A blade at his throat would have been the same. Just as I'd expected.
Only one way.
Whether it would work, I had no idea. I had to try. One more roll—
There.
I was as close to the spectators as I could get. We were tumbling around on the ground, so instead of backing off they were crowding in for a better look. I took the sword out of his hand.
Target: the boss.
As fast as I could. I rolled sideways, shot an arm out, caught the boss's ankle, and locked it down.
"!"
I sat up and, in the same instant, drove the sword in my other hand between the boss's thighs.
"Everybody freeze! Move, and the femoral artery gets opened."
The finest weak point a blade can threaten is the throat. Going for the throat of someone on their feet, while you're rolling on the floor, is impossible.
"That crazy little bastard!"
"E-everybody freeze!"
And the proper way to take a hostage by the throat is from behind. In this position, that was out of the question.
"Just—everybody stay still!"
"The fuck is this mess!"
But the lower body has weak points too.
The inner thigh. The femoral artery. Catch an ankle and put your weight on it, and a person's foot fixes in place easier than you'd think.
"You psycho little shit, you dare—!"
"This is cheating! Forfeit!"
"Cheating, in this? You don't see him getting wrecked!?"
"Everybody shut up and freeze!"
His upper body wasn't restrained in the slightest, and still he couldn't resist. Even if he went for a gun, my butchery would be faster.
Hm?
Someone in the middle of it all finally made a move, so I showed them I meant it.
"That bastard!"
"I said don't move!"
Of course, if the boss actually died, that would be a problem. Shallow. The barest nick.
"I said don't move. A little deeper and it's the artery. It doesn't sit as deep as people think."
"Damn it……."
"Wait, what's an artery?"
"Hell if I know."
"Shut up!"
Now, fast.
"No point dragging this out. Three seconds. Surrender, or I cut."
"Wh-what's that kid saying?"
"Boss! This is against the rules, isn't it?"
"Shit……. There isn't actually a rule against taking hostages."
"Whose side are you on, you little shit!"
I couldn't give them long to think.
"Three."
I glared at him. He was still sprawled on the floor, clutching his arm, eyes flicking in a panic between me and the boss.
"Two."
"Do something!"
"Do what!"
He'd taken his eyes off me completely. He was looking only at the boss.
"One."
From here. I move first.
"……!"
The count wasn't finished, but I pressed the last inch a beat early—the motion of a cut, one beat ahead of the word.
"I surrender! I surrender!"
I drew the blade back at once. A little blood ran down the boss's thigh. I got to my feet, faced the boss, and held out the sword.
"Boss! This is cheating, isn't it?"
"That little bastard, right now—!"
"Enough."
The boss took the sword.
"The duel is over. The kid from the rumors is now Gwanghwamun's first slave."
I won.
After the duel was done, the boss called me aside.
"This way."
The roof of the abandoned building that housed the underground arena. I'd had something I wanted to ask, myself.
"Why did you let me?"
"I let you?"
"Didn't you?"
No question about it. The boss had gone easy. Whether I cut flesh or not, there hadn't been so much as a flinch, and I hadn't even needed to lock that foot down with all my strength. The boss had never tried to pull it free.
"Your movement wasn't bad, I'll give you that. Even so, you must have burned a fair amount of stamina. I could read every move you made. Well, you kept moving and rolling, trying to drag it into a war of attrition, so that tracks."
"……?"
"I'm saying I could have dodged an attack like yours whenever I pleased."
"So you were going easy from start to finish?"
The boss stared straight at me and blinked. The look said there was no need to answer.
"Though calling it going easy is almost a joke. The conditions were stacked completely against you. No one, in any duel so far, has ever forced a surrender."
"It's that rare?"
Even so, a loud complainer ought to have cried surrender somewhere along the way.
"If it looks like our side is going to lose, we cheat."
Ah. Like that.
"I'd already noticed you were aiming for me."
That moment, then.
"……Hm."
When our eyes first met in the middle of the duel. I'd thought the expression was strange even then.
"I decided to watch and see what you were scheming. Taking the commander hostage is textbook. The situation, though, was hardly a forgiving one."
So that was why there had been no dodge.
"A clever read. You know your vital points. A dangerous read, too. Most people don't even know that spot is vital. Against someone stupid, the threat might not land at all. And—"
The boss bent at the waist and thrust that face in close.
"In a real fight, you would have failed. If my life had truly been on the line, I would not have allowed it."
The boss straightened. When I looked up, a crescent moon hung just above the crown of her head. I could have sworn it had been a full moon a few days ago.
"Still, you did what could be done. You fought hard under bad conditions. There's a Core ability sleeping in you, and you're still a child."
She set a hand on my head. It had been a long time since I'd washed my hair.
"You'll go far. The kid from the rumors, indeed. To have come this far at that age—I've never seen the like. The makings of the very best."
It sounded like a compliment, so that was a relief. Still.
"Anyway, I'm a slave, aren't I?"
"That's right. Rules are rules. You did harm one of our family."
"Uhm, that—"
"I know the story. If you meant to live, there wasn't another way. If anything, you were the one who went easy. You ended it with injuries, instead of killing."
It wasn't so much that I'd meant to spare anyone. Killing just felt unclean.
"I rate that highly. That you didn't kill when there was no need."
……The look in her eyes was a heavy thing to be under.
"Have you never killed a person? Even now?"
"Well……."
"Hm?"
"I've never attacked meaning to kill."
"So you've only ever put a blade in to subdue."
"Yeah. But the wounds were bad. They might have died later—"
"In our world, if you don't finish them in front of your eyes, it doesn't count as a kill."
That was more or less how I thought of it, too.
"The same applies when you handle an assassination contract. Fail to kill them on the spot, and they die later of the aftereffects, you don't receive the full fee."
"Mm."
"Never killed anyone. Then the road ahead will be a hard one. Well. Everyone's like that at first. The first time is the difficult part."
"That's what I was told."
"Your older brothers and sisters?"
"The Old Man."
"The Old Man?"
"There's someone."
"Hm."
She took her hand off my head.
"Now that you're a slave, I'll need a name. Kid. Your name?"
"Uhm, my name is—"
"Boss! Boss! Where are you!"
"Coming! Hm. Was the name you just gave your real one?"
"Yeah."
"Naive child."
My real name had slipped out before I knew it.
"Planning to live your whole life as a slave?"
"Huh?"
"I asked if you mean to live that way forever."
"You're going to let me go?"
"I asked whether you want to remain a slave for the rest of your life."
"……No."
"Then for as long as you are one, live under an alias. Your name. Again."
"……Son Jeonggu."
She turned away.
"A good name. Almost a waste, hanging it on a slave."
And that was how I survived.