The Warmth of Home
Yu Gangmin slipped out of the convenience store and moved with care, keeping strictly to the blind spots.
A siren wailed in the distance. Before long, vehicles belonging to the Hunter Association came into view.
They'll handle the cleanup.
Leaving the aftermath to them, he crossed the street toward the old kendo dojo.
The sign was dark. The steel shutter had been pulled down tight. On the door hung the closure notice he had posted himself.
The place his father had devoted a lifetime to, and still failed to keep. The place he himself had been forced to shutter without being able to do a thing.
"Hah..."
Yu Gangmin set a canned coffee at the foot of the entrance that led up to the dojo.
"It took me a long time, Father."
Then he bowed, slowly and deeply.
After the Gates opened and the dojo began to fail, the memories attached to this place had all been painful ones. But to a man who had returned after sixty years, even those faded memories were precious.
"Rest well. Don't worry about this place anymore."
He could still recall, faintly, how he had felt this morning — sixty years ago. It hadn't cut as deep as it had for his father, but even so, all he had known then was the hollowness of watching a dojo he had poured his life into close its doors, and the helpless dread of not knowing how to live from here on out.
Not anymore.
What had he endured that hellish life for, if not this? He had the confidence now to keep walking forward, unbowed.
"You've worked so hard."
There was so much he wanted to say. Knowing he could never say any of it, the taste in his mouth was especially bitter.
He bowed once more, deeply, then rose. He left the canned coffee where it was. If his father was still somewhere around here, he hoped that today, at least, the man would look at the dojo the way he used to and drink his coffee.
"I'll be going."
And with that, Yu Gangmin left the dojo behind and headed home.
"Strange, how I remember the way when it feels like it's been so long."
Amazingly, the path home rose in his mind with perfect clarity. He didn't get lost — but he found himself realizing, all over again, how precious the everyday things he had taken for granted truly were. A stretch of road that should have taken barely ten minutes, and he spent a full thirty wandering it, arriving at last before the house.
Gangmin finally stood at the apartment door.
What am I supposed to say?
The hand on the doorknob trembled, faintly. It was a hand that hadn't trembled even when he had faced a hundred and twenty-seven masters in Bulgwigok.
They'll recognize me... won't they?
The shell hadn't changed. But the inside had already been steeped in decades of life in the martial world. He had cut down countless people. He had lived a life he never wanted, one filled with blood and corpses. What if they saw that ugly life on him?
Yu Gangmin was afraid.
"Hoo..."
But as he always had, he chose to break through head-on.
Click.
He opened the door with care. The warm smell of cooking drifted out.
"Gangmin, is that you?"
A familiar voice called from the kitchen.
"......"
He couldn't answer. It was the voice he had spent sixty years trying not to forget — and the voice that had grown fainter with the years, until even in his dreams he couldn't hear it properly.
"Gangmin?"
That voice, here, in the real world. That alone filled his chest so full he couldn't speak.
Then his mother poked her head out from the kitchen.
"Ah."
A ladle hung from one hand. Threads of white had begun to show in her hair. Wrinkles had settled at the corners of her eyes, and her face had grown markedly thinner since his father had passed. She was exactly as he remembered.
"Why are you just standing there?"
"......"
"Did you finish packing up the dojo?"
An ordinary question. To his family, he was someone who had left the house this morning and come back. But Gangmin couldn't even answer that ordinary question easily.
"Mom."
His voice finally came out — so unfamiliar he wondered if he was even capable of making a sound like that.
"Yes?"
"Mom."
"What's wrong?"
His mother came toward him, her face drawn with worry.
"Are you sick?"
Instead of answering, Yu Gangmin pulled her into his arms as she reached to feel his forehead.
"Oh my."
The body in his arms was smaller than he remembered. Even before he had fallen into Murim, his mother had been smaller than him — but now she felt far too small, far too fragile. He couldn't even hold her properly. The slightest bit of force and she might break.
"Mom."
"Yes. Mom's right here."
She patted his back, slowly. At that warmth, something in his chest crumbled.
In sixty years in Murim he had met countless people. He had had teachers. He had had disciples. He had had comrades he had trusted with his life. Not a single one of them could replace this warmth.
"Closing the dojo made you think of your father a lot, didn't it?"
That seemed to be how she explained his sudden behavior. It wasn't wrong. Yu Gangmin didn't bother denying it.
"I'm sorry."
"What do you have to be sorry for?"
"Just... a lot of things."
"How is the dojo going under your fault?"
She patted his back again.
"You did everything you could. Don't carry it in your heart anymore."
Yu Gangmin closed his eyes. That brief comfort was warmer than anything he had heard in the past sixty years.
That was when the door burst open.
"What the hell?"
His younger sister appeared in comfortable clothes, her hair tied up however she'd managed it. That voice, too. That way of talking, too. Exactly as he remembered.
Yu Gangmin let go of his mother and looked at her.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
He strode over and pulled her into a hug as well.
"Eek!"
His sister thrashed in alarm.
"Have you lost it? What's gotten into you?"
"Just because."
"Have you been drinking?"
"I have not."
"Then why are you doing this?! Gross!"
A faint smile touched Yu Gangmin's lips. Sixty years ago, he had always thought that voice was too loud. In Murim, he had missed that nagging more than anything.
"Let go already!"
"Just a little longer."
"Mom! Oppa's being really weird!"
Their mother looked at the two of them and smiled, softly.
"Just let him, for today. He's probably thinking of your father a lot."
"If he's thinking of Dad he should hug Dad's picture. Why is he hugging me?"
"You're Father's daughter too, are you not?"
"What kind of shit logic is that?"
"Your mouth hasn't changed, I see."
"I already saw you this morning. What's with the sudden act?"
This morning. To his family, it had been a few hours ago. To Yu Gangmin, it was a distant past.
"I suppose so."
He smiled, bitterly.
"To me, it feels like a very long time ago."
"Did you breathe in some dust packing up the dojo?"
His sister wriggled out of his arms, then straightened her rumpled clothes with a look of thorough disgust.
"Go wash up. We're eating."
"Understood."
"And what's with that way of talking? You sound like a grandpa."
He had lived sixty years, so she wasn't wrong. Yu Gangmin didn't answer. He headed for the bathroom.
Standing before the mirror, a familiar face looked back. The same face as before he had been swallowed by the Spatial Rift. The outside hadn't changed. But the look in his eyes was different. Sixty years of blood and death remained, deep in those two eyes.
"It's all right. It'll be all right."
He hoped, desperately, that those two would never catch a glimpse of that life.
Yu Gangmin turned on the tap.
Whoosh—
He washed his face over and over in the cold water. Only then did he feel, a little, as if he had come back to reality.
The table held kimchi stew, a rolled omelet, and a few side dishes. An ordinary dinner. Nothing special.
Yu Gangmin sat down. His mother scooped white rice into a bowl and set it in front of him.
"You must be tired from packing up the dojo."
"I'm all right."
"Don't think about anything tonight. Just sleep. You can take your time figuring out what comes next."
"Yes."
Gangmin picked up his spoon. He scooped rice and kimchi stew together and put it in his mouth.
"......"
It was hot. Spicy, and salty. And he had missed it so much.
He had eaten rice in Murim, too. He had been invited to imperial banquets and tasted every delicacy under heaven. He had eaten food said to have been made by the greatest chefs in the world. None of it could replace this taste.
Yu Gangmin ate in silence. One bowl vanished in no time.
"Want more?"
"Yes."
The second bowl emptied just as fast. When he asked for a third, his sister looked at him strangely.
"Did you starve for a few days packing up the dojo?"
"About sixty years."
"What?"
"That's how it feels."
"Oppa, I'm telling you, you are seriously weird today."
His mother wordlessly scooped him another bowl.
"Eat slowly. You'll choke."
"I'm all right."
"Everyone who chokes says that."
Yu Gangmin slowed down a little. While he ate, his eyes stung more than once. Each time, he lowered his head. His mother and his sister pretended not to notice.
When the meal was nearly over, his mother asked carefully,
"Did you finish packing up everything at the dojo?"
"There's still a little left."
"There's no need to rush. The landlord said you can take until next month to clear it out."
"Next month..."
"Why? Is there something you can't bring yourself to throw away?"
Yu Gangmin thought for a moment. The bamboo sword and armor his father had used. The calligraphy that had hung on the wall. The wooden floor he had fallen on and gotten up from countless times. Just this morning, he had thought of it all as remnants of the past. Now he couldn't throw any of it away easily.
"I'll think on it a little more."
"All right."
His mother nodded.
"It's the place your father devoted his whole life to. Take your time until your heart's settled."
"Thank you."
His sister asked as she drank her water,
"So what are you gonna do now?"
"Do about what?"
"The dojo's closed. What are you going to do from now on?"
Yu Gangmin set down his spoon.
In Murim, he had had to fight to survive, and grow stronger so he wouldn't die. Even after becoming the Number One Under Heaven, the people targeting him had never stopped coming. But it was different now. He didn't have to fight anyone. He didn't need to get any stronger.
"What?"
His sister's eyes went wide.
"You're just gonna declare yourself a bum, just like that?"
"I haven't earned enough to live on for the rest of my life, but I should be able to rest for a while."
"The dojo went under. What money do you have?"
"Ah...?"
Yu Gangmin realized his situation a beat too late. In Murim, gold and jewels had been piled up like mountains. Merchant houses and sects from across the land had competed to offer him their wealth. But all of that had stayed in Murim. What he had now was one worn tracksuit, a cell phone, and a bank account that didn't have much left in it.
"I'll be needing money, then."
"You're only realizing that now?"
His sister clicked her tongue, looking at him like he was hopeless. Yu Gangmin's brow furrowed. He had planned to come home and live without doing a thing. But even living in peace required money. It was a world more unforgiving than the martial one he had left.
"Money..."
"You don't have to worry about that already. If you want to rest, rest. Mom will figure something out."
"......"
Yu Gangmin had nothing to say. The man who had been Number One Under Heaven had come home — and found himself nothing more than a young man who was supposed to rest.