The Reason for Trust — 2
Deliberation and anguish are things no martial artist can ever be parted from.
Every aspect of movement demanded a constant weighing of principle, and to take that principle into the body required pondering without end. Extending an arm, shifting a leg, governing the inner energy that flowed serenely along the meridians — and even the teaching of another person.
Having gathered up the insight she had stumbled upon earlier, Chae Jin sat alone keeping watch over the campfire. Beyond the flames, a man bathed in moonlight was practicing Chae Family Tai Chi Chuan as though it were a dance, and she watched him and thought about how she ought to teach him from here on.
Just as even a child of five can hand you a lesson, one can win enlightenment in the very act of teaching someone else. Look — had she not, only today, read a martial manual of no particular value and come away with an insight of her own? So she must watch Yu Wol's Chae Family Tai Chi Chuan, think about the step that came next, and hunt for whatever could be learned from it. That was what it meant to be a martial artist.
And yet, strangely, the moment her eyes settled on him, that thought turned into some other thought entirely.
When had it started — being unable to tear my gaze away from him?
When had it started — teaching him and finding my thoughts drifting away from the martial arts to something else entirely?
Yes. Perhaps it began that day.
"Chae Jin's abilities cannot be trusted. She is unfit to be made the eldest disciple of Moon Lotus Pavilion."
It was a matter her uncle — an elder of the Pavilion — had laid on the table at a family council some years ago. Her pride in her own martial arts was enormous, went his reasoning, and just as enormous was her capacity for a mistake to match. And since she balked at the honing of learning besides, it would be difficult to entrust her with the headship of the Pavilion.
To those words, Chae Jin had nothing to offer in reply. Small wonder — the case he laid out was one she herself agreed with, at least in part.
"Chae Jin is incompetent."
That was her cousin, at that same council. And to that, too, she could only bow her head.
To be fair, she performed decently enough in her own fashion, and set against the average she was far from a poor disciple. But what Moon Lotus Pavilion demanded of its eldest disciple was never the average. She had to be the very best. Measured against the level their expectations required, one could fairly call Chae Jin sufficiently incompetent.
Martial strength alone would not do for the head of a sect. It was true that her skill far outstripped the other inner disciples'. But what of everything else? They had sent her to the Murim Alliance to season her with experience, and she had promptly fixated on Hongseong Gate's eldest disciple — these days, the instant she so much as laid eyes on the woman, she latched onto her demanding a duel. Shown a secret realm, she would gamble on its dangers out of sheer confidence in her own ability. She always insisted such things were well within what she could manage alone, but watching from the sidelines, it was worrying all the same.
So it was beyond help that a woman so sunny and restless by nature failed to please the people seated in the Pavilion's key posts. All the more so if her younger sister Chae Ryeon — weaker in her martial arts for now, granted — went on showing them exactly the figure of a leader they wished for.
And yet Chae Jin had not stepped down from her seat as the Pavilion's eldest disciple. Not only because she wanted it. Because the master of Moon Lotus Pavilion — the Blade Emperor, that name resounding through the jianghu — would not permit it. Someday, so he held, Chae Jin too would come to understand her role, and know what she must do as the Pavilion's eldest disciple.
And so.
Perhaps that was why she clung all the harder to her contest with Hong Ryeon.
"...No. That must be it. I wanted to prove myself — that's all this is."
Poking at the campfire, Chae Jin murmured the words under her breath. The talk from the family council came back to her — the elders' remarks, made as though she weren't even in the room, about her younger sister Chae Ryeon.
The inner demon of hers that never stopped thinking, never stopped turning things over — the chain it had left fastened around her ankles, barring every step forward, still sat uneasily on her.
Chae Jin sighed. The chains that bound her. Of them all, the coldest and heaviest always bored into her awareness as though announcing itself.
Beside Chae Jin, Chae Ryeon was capable.
A place crowded with people who judged her wanting could only weigh on her all the more heavily, the greater her pride as the Pavilion's eldest disciple. Perhaps that was why she so often took herself out of it — natural, if nothing else.
Cold — the eyes that met her whenever she was home.
Heavy — the eyes of everyone watching.
Eyes that wished for competence, and so made her feel her own lack of it. They pressed on her far too heavily.
And so she could not help but fixate on her contest with Hong Ryeon. Beat Hong Ryeon, and it would be enough. Beat Hongseong Gate, and it would be enough. Then — then she could prove herself.
That was why she had come to Seomhwachon to challenge Hong Ryeon, only to be ignored. She had thought the woman a worthy match. She had thought her provocations would draw her out. But Hong Ryeon's own duties had simply come first. Her impatience swelled as large as her disappointment.
This was no time to be sitting still. She could not squander her days to no purpose in a place like this. She had to show her competence — had to defeat Hong Ryeon and be acknowledged as fully deserving of her seat as eldest disciple of a famed orthodox sect. But how? Time flowed on. Hong Ryeon would not receive her, holed up in Hongseong Gate and never once coming out. And the money she had brought for her journey was steadily running dry.
The weight of it. The fretful certainty that, like this, she could accomplish nothing. The wretchedness of learning that the woman she had thought her equal set other things above her. And then — the eyes of Moon Lotus Pavilion's people, which she would have to meet all over again: the incompetent one, unfit for the seat of eldest disciple. In the end they became yet another chain, and it left her squirming.
So even with her purse thinning by the day, she could not bring herself to leave. And so she had made her demand of the innkeeper — the man who practiced the Five Animal Frolics — that he discount her lodging in return for training him in Chae Family Tai Chi Chuan, the foundational art of Moon Lotus Pavilion.
She knew perfectly well it was an unreasonable ask. Seomhwachon was a peaceful place. With the sacred mountain of Hongseong standing close by, monsters hardly ever showed themselves, and the villagers made no special demands of martial artists — which meant there were precious few chances for one to display her strength. Knowing all of that, she had still been unable to keep from asking him.
True, she could have earned her coin by taking commissions in Yangwi Fortress, a short way out from the village. But with no telling when a chance to cross blades with Hong Ryeon might arise, she could not carelessly leave Seomhwachon.
It had been mortifying. Hardly the sort of bargain Moon Lotus Pavilion's eldest disciple ought to propose. And yet he had simply accepted it, unbothered. He showed no particular interest in the martial arts, and had taken her offer anyway — and truthfully, she couldn't help but take notice of him for it.
From then on, she had watched him. Only then did she come to see it: he was someone like Chae Ryeon. A person who knew precisely what he had to do, and went and did it. A person who possessed the very 'competence' the Pavilion's elders were forever invoking.
Was that why? She threw herself harder into teaching him Chae Family Tai Chi Chuan — into proving, through the teaching of it, her own worth as a martial artist.
And then you showed me. Good heavens. How long had you even been learning Chae Family Tai Chi Chuan — and you snuffed out a fire tiger's flames? Growing that much in so short a time was beyond what even Moon Lotus Pavilion's other outer disciples, born and raised in martial houses, would dare reach for. By showing me your competence, you rescued me.
But the light of that rescue was pared thin by the news of Hong Ryeon — how she had fought the demonic cultists and won herself still greater merit. Ah. You have made me wretched all over again.
And yet, to that me — to the me who had bared her own incompetence —
"You've worked hard too."
You said it as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
Yes. That was when I could no longer take my eyes off you — you who had been, until then, merely someone I noticed in passing. When the room grew comfortable: one narrow bed, one small table, one brazier, and beyond the window the sacred mountain where red Thousand-Day Plum Blossoms bloomed in wild profusion. When that room — far smaller and shabbier than mine in the Murim Alliance or at Moon Lotus Pavilion — became familiar, and easy to be in. When, from that room's window, my gaze slid off Mount Hongseong and turned, sly and sidelong, to steal glances at you in the back yard. When I could no longer pull my eyes from you, and whenever I looked at you — whenever I was at your side — I stopped feeling the chains wound tight around my heart.
It had all begun that day.
— Crackle!
A spark off the campfire broke the reverie, and Chae Jin turned her eyes from the past to the present. And the first thing to enter that present was a man — the single point of ease in a campsite that had become nothing but awkward.
Watching Yu Wol run through Chae Family Tai Chi Chuan as he always did, she felt the corners of her mouth lift of their own accord. Steadiness and peace came flooding into the heart that sat bound in chains. Was it because those movements had grown so utterly familiar to her? All the turning-over in her head had come to think of this place as somewhere comfortable.
Through the window of her room she could see the inn's back yard. In one corner lingered the spot from when she had camped out during her days at Hongseong Gate, and beside it lay a broad stretch of ground cleared for training. Just knowing he was there — that he trained at the same hour, every day — was enough to make all of this feel like that haven of ease.
And so she had watched after him, quiet and unthinking, and the ease had come to her naturally. Yes. Being at his side was comfortable. More comfortable than Moon Lotus Pavilion, where competence was hoped for and so nothing but her lack of it was ever seen.
That was why she felt no urge to leave. Staying no longer weighed on her. So a little longer — just a very little longer.
That was why I accepted your suggestion that we go to Yangwi Fortress — accepted it with a smile.
And even there, you were capable. The Imperial Conscription Department, of all things — even a general of the empire called you 'Teacher.' And then, just as naturally, you went and solved what even they could not. Someone that capable, acknowledged by so many — you. 'Capable' in a way I am not. You cannot know how full my heart was, being told that you trusted me.
So then — the reason I couldn't touch my tobacco to yours and light it, the way Father and Mother used to, like a kiss, was simply that it would have been improper. The coughing was only the scent of tobacco I had never smoked before. The heat in my face was only because my breath caught. The pounding of my heart was only surprise at the taste of my first tobacco. And the reason I couldn't look at you was simply...
Yes. Simply because I was still just a very little short of comfortable, that's all. So then — no. It isn't that. It's not...
"It's not that at all! You little brat!!"
Wait — the Yu Hyeon Fist Form, there of all places?!
I taught him that only yesterday, and he's fumbling it again.
"Ahh, well. Can't be helped."
Yes. You are capable. But every now and then you show these clumsy moments of yours. And if that is so, then you need someone standing at your side to keep watch, don't you? And for a role like that, it would have to be the eldest disciple of Moon Lotus Pavilion — renowned throughout the murim, and trusted by you. Short of Chae Jin, the Moonlight Blade herself, hardly anyone could manage it.
Chae Jin bounced up from her seat, drove the strength of her long, straight legs into the ground, and closed the distance to him — just as he had once closed it to her. And as she always did, she broke into a beaming grin.
"Come on! Let's try that again!"
Chae Jin burst into that laugh of hers — overflowing with confidence, just a shade imperious.
"Ah-ah. Loosen up. Loosen. I told you the most important thing in Chae Family Tai Chi Chuan is the flow, didn't I? To grasp the secret of Shifting Flowers and Grafting Trees, you need no wasted strength. You make another's power your own. Like this."
She took his hand as naturally as breathing and pulled him toward her. Drawn gently in, he turned his body and pressed his back against her chest. Chae Family Tai Chi Chuan was like water — and so, rather than shoving him away, she wrapped softly around him and pushed out against the hand that held hers. Yu Wol, whirling with their hands still joined, retreated several steps and used that very push to draw her after him.
Yu Wol, meeting her gaze head-on, labored on in silence, lips pressed tight, sweat rolling down his face. Watching him — hands joining and parting, everything moving soft and unbroken — Chae Jin thought it looked almost like a dance.
The chirr of the field insects was the orchestra at play. The moonlight spilling from the sky was the light of the banquet hall. This campsite, carpeted in fresh grass and dark earth, was the hall's floor. In this vast banquet hall where only the two of them stood — was it so very wrong, just her own mistaken fancy, to see in this exchange of Chae Family Tai Chi Chuan a dance the two of them were dancing together?
Chae Jin smiled.
At the man who had taken her in at an inn she could now, without any strangeness at all, think of as her own home. At the man who affirmed her, and trusted her. At the man who was unfolding Chae Family Tai Chi Chuan beautifully, shaping himself to her. And — at Yu Wol, more at ease now than he had ever been.