The Empty Seat Beside Me
"Could you... help me?"
"......."
I could not give an immediate answer to my mother Baek Yeo-hae's carefully posed question. It was not that I didn't know the answer, nor that the question displeased me. If I had to put it rightly, I simply needed a moment to master emotions that were surging despite myself.
Khmm.
What I meant was that if I let my voice out just now, I somehow felt I would fail to hide its tremor.
"If it sits ill with you, we can pretend this never happened. Forgive me for troubling your heart over nothing."
Judging my silence a refusal, perhaps, Mother Baek Yeo-hae moved to smooth the moment over. A misunderstanding was best cleared up quickly — I could hardly let one more obstacle stand in the way of a relationship that had only just begun to mend.
"No."
Having said so, I lifted my head and looked at her. She returned my gaze with one every bit as steady.
I had always believed that grace was something a person gained by giving it. In the narrow world I knew, the common wisdom held that the feeling of a kindness owed was earned not by asking favors, but through the act of granting them. But now I understood that my common sense had been wrong — for in the sight of Mother Baek Yeo-hae asking me for help, I had felt the depth of her grace. It was, perhaps, a grace that bore the name of courage.
"Of course. That is only right. I will help you."
Perhaps thanks to the moment I had bought myself, my voice came out clear and unwavering.
"Thank you."
Color bloomed in Mother Baek Yeo-hae's face, but my words were not yet done.
"In return, I have a condition of my own."
"A condition?"
At that word, Mother Baek Yeo-hae flinched — no doubt because it had been the source of no small worry for her of late. Before her eyes, I drew from my breast fold the thing I had tucked away and held it out to her.
"What is this?"
"Take it, please. That is my condition."
"...I see."
Without asking one question more, she tucked what I had given her into her own breast.
What I had handed my mother was a spiritual herb called the Supreme Beauty Herb — the last of the three rare elixirs secured from the Hwanragwon. There was the Five-Leaf Immortal Orchid that Chun-baek had taken as a gift for his master, the Stabilizing Immortal Herb used to pull Ma Sok back from qi deviation, and then, last of all, this Supreme Beauty Herb. As its name made plain, it was an elixir of singular effect on one's appearance — roughly a lesser counterpart to the Vermilion Fruit, that supreme elixir I had consumed back when I achieved the Third Stage. Save for lending the skin a clear luster, it had precious little else to offer, which made it an odd thing indeed: an elixir one hardly knew whether to call an elixir at all.
"Why did you choose that one?"
"It just seemed like it would be the most expensive."
I remember cobbling together that flimsy excuse in answer to Chun-baek's question. I had pocketed the herb without thinking, back when we were wrapping up our business in the Hwanragwon — but it seems some part of me had wanted all along to give it to Mother Baek Yeo-hae. Only now do I clearly understand the heart I carried back then. The human mind is a difficult thing indeed.
"If you will accept it, then I will go and settle the matter."
"...Thank you."
It was time, I decided, to allow myself to become a better son.
In my days as Myeong-gae, I had roamed the whole world, surveying every region it held. It would be no exaggeration to say I left no stone unturned among the hidden valleys blessed by heaven where peerless elixirs were said to have been found. Wherever such a place drew me, I focused every nerve on committing its geography to memory — analyzing the terrain with the passage of years in mind, fixing each landmark in my head. Naturally, it was all for the arrangements I meant to make after my regression.
Those efforts had not gone to waste; whenever I returned to one of those hidden sanctuaries in Dancheon Myeong's body, a familiar déjà vu would wash over me.
"It has been a long time since I walked this road as well."
But the déjà vu I felt now ran on an entirely different mechanism. If what I had felt tracing the paths of my arrangements owed to a keen mind and the focus of those days, what I felt now was the product of endless repetition — a road worn into me by sheer habit. This was the road that Dancheon Myeong, before his regression, had traveled back and forth beyond counting, all for the chance to glimpse his fiancée Yang Su-rin's face just once more.
"Busy again today, little Rin?"
"I'm sorry, young master."
Dancheon Myeong, who had lost his heart to Yang Su-rin at first sight, shuttled between the Yang Family Hall and the Dancheon Clan at every opportunity. Naturally — it was the heart of a man in love, aching to see his fiancée's face one more time.
"I'll come again next time."
"Um, young master?"
"Hm?"
"Young Lady Su-rin asked me to deliver this to you."
"Oh? My thanks."
The letter the Yang Family Hall guardsman handed over carried a single request: she would come to the Dancheon Clan herself, so please wait for her.
And...
The time she came looking for me again, just as the letter promised, was after I had lost the contest for succession.
All of it, now, a thing that never happened. I let the memory drift past — an unpleasant one, long since swallowed by the crevices of time. And the reason I could let it go so easily was not simply that I am a magnanimous man.
"You!"
After my regression, it was Yang Su-rin who came looking for me at every turn.
"Go on, try calling me 'Young Mistress.'"
There was Yang Su-rin, who kept watch over me for a full month when I lay comatose achieving the Fourth Stage.
"I heard something terrible has befallen the Dancheon Clan."
There was Yang Su-rin, who raced to our gates without delay, warriors in tow, when calamity struck the clan. It would be nearer the truth to say that layer upon layer of good memories had accumulated with this person called Yang Su-rin — enough to bury the bad ones of my past life.
So if you asked me what I feel for Yang Su-rin now...
.......
Honestly, I couldn't say.
Yang Su-rin, Young Mistress of the Yang Family Hall, had originally been one piece of my arrangement for becoming Alliance Leader. The tie between us should have been severed once the secret scheme she had plotted with Baek Yeo-hae was dismantled; that I came to renew it was for no loftier reason than that. Winning the Alliance Leader's seat required the backing of the many factions, and she was to have been the very first step of my march toward it.
But a plan that unfolded exactly as drawn would deserve to be called not a plan but a prophecy. A plan, by its nature, is bound to meet endless variables, and a fine plan is one that bends its course to meet them. Since I was a man who built his plans on a keen mind, a web of information, and the arrangements of my regression, it would be right to say my plans shifted direction at every branching point they met.
The point at which Yang Su-rin ceased to matter in my plans would be around the time I claimed the Ten-Thousand-Year Supreme Blood Treasure and arrived at the completion of the Fifth Stage of the Yakseon Heart Decision. Not that my lofty achievements had made the Yang Family Hall's strength unnecessary — it was because I had changed the future of Yeom Gi-ha, the Sovereign of Destruction, a martial artist of rare eminence.
I must be honest with myself. The moment I decided I no longer needed to become Alliance Leader, I stopped paying attention to Yang Su-rin. It may have been unconscious. It may, perhaps, have been quite deliberate. Knowing full well that I do not understand my own heart, I had given up on hunting for the right answer.
And then, at last...
"What brings you here?"
My steps had carried me to Yang Su-rin.
"You did call for me, didn't you?"
"Me?"
There sat Yang Su-rin, playing the innocent with a sulky look on her face.
I had regressed to the age of eighteen. With two years between Yang Su-rin and me, she would have been a tender sixteen at the time. By the customs of the Jianghu, daughters of prominent families were wed before they came of age, so hers was neither an early nor a late betrothal. And now that I had turned twenty-four, Yang Su-rin would be twenty-two. Twenty-two was hardly an old maid's age, to be sure — but I knew it was the age when the pressure to marry begins to close in.
"It has been a while."
It was true we were meeting after a very long time, so I offered her a perfectly ordinary greeting. For the record, the last time Dancheon Myeong had seen Yang Su-rin before his regression was at twenty, right on the eve of his break with the clan. She had been eighteen then, her beauty already living up to the name of one of the Five Flowers of Anhui. But seeing her now, I understood at last: for all that the proper age for a Jianghu noblewoman to marry came before her coming of age, a beauty such as hers truly bloomed only after it.
Yang Su-rin at twenty-two — the words "Five Flowers of Anhui" no longer suited her. If one had to reach for a title, "Foremost Beauty of Anhui" would be the right one. Recalling that Bukgung Seol-ah, Young Palace Master of the North Sea Ice Palace, had carried the title of one of the Three Flowers Under Heaven, I thought Yang Su-rin, too, might well deserve to have "under heaven" attached to her name.
"That's because you insist on such formality, I'd say."
People do not change easily — yet it is also people who change in a single instant; that much I knew. The Yang Su-rin I saw after so long showed none of the old spitfire that used to blurt "You!" without warning; in its place was the air of a refined young lady. Of course, I could vaguely tell the act was just that — an act. But it seemed wiser to play along as though I couldn't.
"What business did you call me here for?"
At my flat question, her expression clouded into a sulk once more.
"Must I have business to want to see you?"
"I would imagine so."
"Ha!"
I suspected she had rarely, if ever, met a man so unmoved before her beauty. In truth, her looks were precisely that extraordinary, so it was hardly vanity on her part.
"What are you plotting?"
"Hm?"
"Does it have something to do with the demonic cult?"
I have always favored a direct way with words, but I could not help being thrown off balance by how abruptly Yang Su-rin drove in. Whether she took delight in my being struck dumb, a satisfied smile crept across her face.
"The annihilation of the Black Water Gate together with the vagabond Yi Chun-baek, and afterward the unmasking of a demonic cult spy. The destruction of Yeomhwabang alongside Yeom Gi-ha the Sovereign of Destruction, and afterward another spy unmasked. The infiltration of the Dancheon Clan by agents led by a Demon Lord. The slaying of Eumhyeol Sinma with Yi Chun-baek and Chwipung-gae at your side..."
From her lips flowed the record of every step I had taken.
"Are you preparing for the Great War of Righteousness and Evil?"
I knew that when the initiative was seized from me like this, arguing the question would only let her reel me in further. Being a capable information broker in my own right, I promptly bent the crux of the conversation a little sideways. Concealing my surprise was, of course, only natural.
"Where did you get that information?"
Yang Su-rin gave a small, knowing laugh, as though she saw through me and would let it pass.
"I told you, didn't I? That I'd built myself a hidden network."
"Hm."
It had been a mere four years since Yang Su-rin became Young Mistress, and the hidden network she had built already stood shoulder to shoulder with the foremost intelligence organizations under heaven. It told me just how capable she was — Yang Su-rin, with the power of gold truly in her grasp.
"Dig no deeper than that. It is dangerous."
It was less a warning, I suppose, than a worry. Even for a house counted among Anhui's three finest, the Heavenly Demon Cult was a name that a merchant guild like the Yang Family Hall could never bear up under.
"I have no intention of digging. I simply followed your trail, and this is where it led."
It seemed better not to ask why she had been following me.
"Then that is well. It would not do to set foot in that abyss."
So I simply urged her once more. I knew too well how fearsome a thing human curiosity could be.
Her expression shifting, Yang Su-rin asked again.
"What will you do when it's over?"
"What do you mean?"
"The Great War of Righteousness and Evil. What will you do once it ends?"
The answer did not come at once. I had spent all my deliberation on a future in which the Great War never happened, and had scarcely ever imagined what might come after. If the Great War were erased, a life of peace would be granted even to me on the far side of it — and yet I had given that prospect precious little deep thought.
Ah.
Fortunately, one thing did come to mind.
"I will become Captain of the Guard of the Dancheon Clan."
I would succeed my uncle Yeo-baek. On that resolve, nothing had changed.
"I am the Young Mistress of the Yang Family Hall."
"I know."
"And in time, you will become its Hall Master."
"I suppose I will."
"A Hall Master holds the sole right to decide the matter of her own marriage."
"...I see."
That Yang Su-rin had reached twenty-two unwed was, it seemed, the fruit of her own choosing.
Her gaze came to rest on me. It struck me as remarkably clear and unclouded. Looking into those eyes, I knew: this Yang Su-rin and the girl who had betrayed me at eighteen were two entirely different people.
I did not know what answer to give.
"I'm only asking you to give it some thought, that's all. That's what I wanted to say."
With that, Yang Su-rin rose from her seat.
"I have a busy schedule, so I'll be on my way."
"Very well."
Only long after she had gone could I finally bring myself to rise.
My mind was a tangle, but one thing at least was clear. Perhaps one more reason to see my mission through — to erase the Great War of Righteousness and Evil — had just been added to my life. And the thought of what might wait on the far side of that mission did not feel bad at all.