The Green Forest (3)
The Green Forest (3)
"So, what business brought you here?"
Sannyeo asked why I had come. Since I didn't know her well, I concealed my true intentions and answered.
"Turns out thieving suits my nature. Better than squirming under someone else's thumb — taking and seizing things with my own two hands, that's what really satisfies me."
"Is that really the reason? The vessel you've chosen seems too small for your ambition. Your eyes aren't the kind that would believe some petty bandit gang will embrace you. You have another purpose, don't you?"
"No."
I shook my head firmly and answered with finality. When telling a lie, confidence matters most. Only by arming myself with the confidence that the other wouldn't see through my lie could I conceal what lay inside. Even though I denied the truth to the end, Sannyeo maintained a leisurely expression.
"An attitude brimming with confidence is good, but just because you lie boldly doesn't turn everything into truth."
I didn't say more. Instead, I swung the axe lightly through the air to test its weight. Because of its characteristic heft, my body lurched forward a little with each swing. I had thought it was a simple, brutish weapon, but wild swings could easily drag you into self-destruction.
Sannyeo watched me swing it and said,
"An axe. You've never handled one, have you? Your ambition overflows, but you've never even learned to wield a weapon, and you're convinced your glory lies in this shabby bandit den. Your lies just don't add up."
She was utterly convinced I was lying. I nodded and started to leave the storehouse. My plan was to ask others about her first.
"Docheol. I understand that you can't trust me. But we... share a similar goal."
Hearing her words, I stopped in my tracks. When I turned my head back, Sannyeo's eyes were still emitting that red glow and piercing right through me. Her penetrating gaze was filled with self-assurance and earnestness. I halted my exit and walked back to her.
When I looked outside, the bandit who had escorted me was nodding off, and the stronghold was quiet. It didn't seem like arriving a little late would be a problem.
Isn't this a connection after all?
Having a longer talk with her, just once, surely wouldn't be a bad thing.
I settled down facing her again. I heard Sannyeo exhale in relief.
I asked,
"So what's your goal?"
"To swallow the martial world whole."
Sannyeo stated this enormous goal in a calm tone. She fully understood the meaning of her words, and at the same time, she brimmed with certainty that she could actually achieve it. As for me, the declaration was so abruptly grandiose that I couldn't react for a moment and could only blink in silence.
Sannyeo, like a person intoxicated by her own objective, looked up at the sky and said,
"Magnificent, isn't it?"
"A pretty grand goal to be nursing inside an iron cage in a Green Forest stronghold."
At my snide remark, Sannyeo showed no sign of anger. She looked at me and said,
"Your goal?"
"Broadly speaking, power and authority. People bowing their heads when they call my name, and me gaining overwhelming strength and swinging it around however I please."
After saying that, I made a show of roughly swinging the axe. It looked just like a child playing with a toy, so Sannyeo smiled. She answered me in the same mocking tone I had used.
"A rude and vulgar dream. But still, our goals are the same."
"Right. So, what are you trying to say? You have a proposition for me, which is why you latched onto me like this, isn't it?"
Sannyeo hadn't spoken to me just to build rapport. She clearly wanted something from me. Sannyeo nodded at the question and said,
"You. You've never properly learned martial arts, have you?"
I nodded.
"Right. The reason I came here was to secure the money to learn."
"Money?"
Sannyeo cocked her head at my words. The innkeeper's boy had said that charging expensive entrance fees wasn't such an old practice, so it seemed Sannyeo hadn't heard news from outside for quite some time. Had she been locked up here all this while?
"The massive sects are charging entrance fees. What I had planned was to save up the money to enter one of those sects and then properly learn martial arts there."
"It's not a very clever plan."
I didn't reply to her comment. But because I partly acknowledged it myself, I clicked my tongue. The reason I had chosen this path was that it was practically the only way I could properly learn martial arts at the moment.
No matter how much one styled oneself a fatalist, I knew that throwing yourself off cliffs hoping for a fateful encounter was a foolish act.
Sannyeo said,
"Forget that. Learn from me."
I let out a hollow laugh. A person locked up in the prison of the sixtieth-something-ranked chieftain of the Green Forest was going to teach someone martial arts?
What absurd nonsense.
"What are you talking about?"
"You can't believe it?"
Sannyeo spoke in a tone that suggested she expected my disbelief. I wholeheartedly agreed with her words.
"There's no way I could. You're locked up in here. In the stronghold of a chieftain ranked in the sixtieth-something range out of over seventy chiefs."
"It might look that way."
Sannyeo rose to her feet.
Seeing her like this, she was quite tall.
Sannyeo showed me the manacles on her hands. The shackles, made of some unknown, hard material, were as thick as stone tablets and clamped around her wrists, but Sannyeo moved her hands as if they weighed nothing at all.
With her hands still bound, she raised them toward the iron bars. She placed her fingers over the lock mechanism and steadied her breathing.
"Hoo...."
As if her breath were dying out, she let out a long exhale and flicked her wrist lightly.
Tung!
At the same instant, the lock securing the iron-barred door fell away with a heavy clunk. Before the weighty lump—cleanly separated as if it had been loose from the start—could hit the floor, Sannyeo stretched out her foot and caught the lock on her instep.
"Whoops."
Footwork as light as catching a soccer ball.
She pushed the lock that had landed on her foot back inside the cell, then opened the door and stepped out.
Before I knew it, I had taken a step back and was gripping the axe tightly. Because as she drew closer, the hairs on my body began to stand on end and tension started flooding in.
It didn't feel like I was facing a person. A strange terror coiled around my heart, as if I were face-to-face with a wild beast.
As if she couldn't sense my alarm, Sannyeo closed the distance with a feather-light gait.
And then, facing me, she said this.
"Come at me."
"...fuck!"
I gritted my teeth. I channeled my inner energy into the hand gripping the axe and swung it wildly at her head.
"You're clumsy. Way too clumsy."
But before I could even complete the swing, Sannyeo spoke in a mocking tone and stretched out her long leg to tap-tap against my body. It seemed like she moved incredibly slowly, but it was unmistakably faster than my axe swing, and the moment her foot touched my body, the strength drained from my legs.
"Aack...!"
I couldn't even manage a proper scream and was forced to roll across the floor. The axe fell to the ground, and I had no choice but to lift my eyes and meet her gaze while barely catching my breath. Because she wore low-cut clothes, her pale bare skin was fully visible, and I could feel her crimson gaze looking down upon me.
"Docheol. Think about it. When the giant sects take entrance fees, do you think they really teach those people all their secret teachings? They're just exploiting and swallowing up people who are lost in the illusion that they'll eventually learn the secret arts someday. I can see through it clearly even from inside this iron cage. Why do you pretend not to know?"
"That's...."
She was right. There was sense in her words. Even as I tried somehow to get my body back up, I found myself nodding at what she said.
"On the other hand, if you learn from me? You will gain as much power as you want and continue to advance. And I will gain a comrade to overturn this martial world with me."
She stretched out her foot again and tap-tapped my body.
"Huh...! Euh...!"
Sweat poured down like rain, and strength was slowly returning to my body. As feeling came back into my tingling, paralyzed legs, I flopped around like a fish stranded on a pier.
Sannyeo said,
"Of course, I have no intention of teaching you for free either. If you refuse, I won't stop you. And just because I beat you once doesn't guarantee that I'll be a good teacher."
I picked myself up. When I looked up after brushing the dirt off my chin and lips, she was already stepping backward, moving back inside the iron cage. I spat the dirt onto the floor and asked.
"....What do you get out of this?"
Sannyeo smiled and said,
"I already told you. I get someone to overturn the martial world together with me."
She was truly an incomprehensible woman.
Looking for a disciple for that kind of reason — had something gone wrong with her head?
I matched her smile. In that pitch-black space, each of us bared our white teeth and shared the same emotion.
"....That's pretty attractive."
But it was an attractive story.
Wasn't it a truly romantic and entertaining story?
Besides, it was also somehow a story of destiny too.
"Yes. Exactly. It's a truly attractive story. Those who share the same heavenly mandate, combining their strength to overturn the world."
Sannyeo was looking at the sky again.
Though it was blocked by the tent, could the stars be vividly visible in her eyes? Sannyeo stared into empty space and her expression changed. The smile vanished from her face, and the warm current of emotion that had filled the storehouse was cut off abruptly.
"But, what about you? Can you be a good disciple, and can you run with me all the way to the end?"
Sannyeo fixed her gaze on me again.
She blinked her red eyes, waiting for my answer. I picked the axe back up and said,
"So if I want to receive your teaching, I have to prove myself?"
"That's right."
"I'd appreciate it if you could be more specific. When it comes to Zen riddles... I'm a bit of an ignorant bastard, you see."
Sannyeo raised her manacled hands, showing them, and said,
"I won't do anything from here on."
She had stuck the iron door's lock back on carelessly. The lock that had once seemed a symbol of sturdy defenses had now proven beyond doubt that she could leave anytime she wished.
"Take me with you, and escape from here safely."
Sannyeo tilted her head and added,
"If you're scared, I don't mind if you give up."
I shook my head.
Because a challenge like this was something I actually welcomed.
Anything easily gained is no fun — that's a rule.
Only what you obtain after flesh and bone are crushed and shattered can truly be called a real harvest.
Looking at Sannyeo, I said,
"That's what makes it fun."