An Outing to Die For
Young Master Dang... how is it you've come with nothing but that neck?
"Then let's head out right this minute."
"Right now? This very second?"
"Yes. Is there some problem with that?"
"No, it's not that exactly..."
As I sat there hemming and hawing over his suggestion that we leave at once, Dang Giyeong chimed in, smooth as silk.
"You know what they say — strike while the iron is hot. This sort of thing calls for quick feet, not deep thought."
Something about him felt oddly pushy, and that puzzled me — but nothing dangerous had happened in recent memory, and whatever sense of caution I once possessed had long since rotted away. I mulled it over briefly, then gave my answer.
"Fine... let's do it. A quick trip out and back couldn't hurt."
"As hearty and decisive as ever! Come, come, let's be off. I know just the place."
Grinning from ear to ear for reasons I couldn't fathom, Giyeong led the way, and I followed him out of the Dang Clan compound.
"You'll be riding this."
"Whoa... just how far are we going, that you went and prepared all this?"
Waiting beyond the front gate was a carriage.
Dang Giyeong spread his hands over it with pride, presenting the four-horse rig like a man unveiling a masterpiece.
"I thought we might be going quite a distance. Now, if we used lightfoot technique it would only take the time it takes to eat a meal... but where's the romance in that?"
It was, I had to admit, a persuasive argument. As I nodded along, Giyeong leaned in close and dropped his voice to a whisper.
"Besides, there are already several jugs of wine loaded inside the carriage. Carrying them up ourselves would be a dreadful bother, wouldn't it?"
"...Fair point."
Swayed by his reasoning, I climbed aboard the carriage.
And what in the world is that about?
The only thing that nagged at me was the driver, whose bamboo hat was pulled down so low that not a single feature of his face was visible.
Clatter-rattle—
The moment Giyeong climbed in after me and pulled the door shut, the carriage lurched into motion.
I studied him, suspicion plain on my face.
"Say... do carriage drivers wear their hats like that these days?"
"Not just these days — drivers have always worn them that way. They sit outside for hours on end, after all, and the sun gets right in their eyes."
He answered far too smoothly. I sighed inwardly.
Aigoo... feeling uneasy every time I look at that guy is probably just me being paranoid. Have I gotten too sensitive lately...?
But when I turned my head, there was Giyeong, grinning away behind those slitted eyes of his.
No... it's not that I'm being oversensitive. The problem is that man's face. His villain's face is the problem...
I sat there awkwardly, chin propped on my hand, saying nothing, until at last Giyeong broke the silence.
"Young Master, if you're tired, get some sleep. We still have quite a way to go."
The unease never quite left me, but I'd already boarded the carriage — calling the whole thing off now would have been ridiculous. So, just as he suggested, I quietly closed my eyes and let sleep take me.
"Young Master! We've arrived."
I had drifted off despite myself. At his voice I groggily stirred awake, and Giyeong threw the carriage door open.
Whooooosh—
A frigid gust of winter wind swept past me, and it was as if I'd splashed my face with cold water — the last of my sleep drained away. I looked outside.
"Ohh..."
Through the open door, the world beyond was a vista of purest white, as though heaven had laid a fresh sheet of paper across the whole earth.
Leaving Giyeong behind to gather up the jugs marked with the character for wine, I stepped out of the carriage and drank in the sight with genuine awe.
The mountain, not so very large, wore its snow like a sheet of white silk draped down its slopes — beautiful enough that exclamations spilled out of me unbidden.
"Wooow... this really is a magnificent sight."
Giyeong emerged from the carriage behind me, a jug of wine cradled in each arm.
"Isn't it? The most beautiful spot in these parts come wintertime."
I nodded along.
"It's funny how well you know places like this."
"Of course. Do you have any idea how much I've tramped around Sichuan?"
That inn last time, after all, had merely suffered an unfortunate accident — its noodles had been nothing short of miraculous. And this mountain's scenery was spectacular in its own right.
Privately conceding that the man did, in fact, know Sichuan inside and out, I went on admiring the view — when suddenly:
"Right... shall we head up, then?"
"...What?"
At Giyeong's out-of-nowhere suggestion that we climb the mountain, I stared at him, dumbfounded — but he ignored me as though he hadn't heard, pressed a jug of wine into my hands, and said:
"There's a hermitage up there. That's our destination for today."
"Haaah..."
I had come here to rest — comfortably, in both body and mind — and now he wanted a hike. I heaved a sigh, radiating annoyance from every pore, and Giyeong grinned slyly.
"We went to the trouble of borrowing a carriage to come all the way out to scenery like this. Surely we owe it to ourselves to see the finest view this mountain has to offer?"
Even so, I kept wearing the face of an old man for whom every affair in the world had become a chore, so he tried once more.
"You came all this way just to glance around the foothills and go home? That's hardly living, is it? Where's your romance?"
Whining like a six-year-old begging to be taken to the playground. I finally relented with a sour face.
"Fine, let's go... but if that view turns out to be anything less than spectacular—"
"Just trust me. They do say fortune favors those who trust, don't they?"
How long did we climb? By the time I reached the hermitage, I was setting the wine jug down beside me and gasping.
"Wow..."
Seeing my reaction, Giyeong looked thoroughly pleased with himself.
"Well? Isn't it magnifice—"
"Looks about the same as down below. So this is what I hauled that jug up a mountain for an hour. Wait — what was that?"
"Nothing at all, Young Master."
Feeling a twinge of guilt for cutting him off mid-sentence, I asked him to repeat himself, but Giyeong only waved a dismissive hand, his expression noticeably deflated.
"Anyway — shall we have that drink?"
He flopped down at the hermitage and said exactly what I'd been waiting to hear. Eager for my first taste of alcohol in what felt like an age, I threw open the wine jug.
The aroma of liquor — the first in months — sent my eyes rolling back in my head, and I was raising a cup to gulp it down when—
"Young Master, one moment!"
"What now? What is it this time."
I snapped at him, irritation bleeding into my voice, and he abruptly held out toward me the other jug he'd carried up the mountain.
"This one's yours."
The jug he offered was plainly marked with the character for wine on one side — and the character for poison on the other.
"Ha... right. Well, I suppose that works too."
"Miss Murin did insist that even after she left, I was to see you took your poison regularly and without fail..."
I accepted the jug of poison wine from him and drained a cup in one smooth, satisfying go.
"Kiyaaa—"
As I sat there in bliss, savoring the heat of it burning a trail down my throat, Giyeong rummaged out something from who-knows-where, carefully wrapped in paper.
Curious, I watched as he unfolded the wrapping.
"It seemed a shame to just drink, so I brought along a few things to nibble on."
"Oh... nice."
Unwrapped, it turned out to be grilled chicken skewers or something of the sort, and I was reaching for one quite naturally when—
"Young Master! Hold on just a moment."
Giyeong stopped me yet again, then dug out something else entirely and laid it open before me.
"This is for you, Young Master."
At the fluorescent frog skewer he held out, something in me snapped. I snatched up the gourd I'd been using as a wine cup and roared.
"You... you son of a bitch!"
As I swung the gourd at his skull, Giyeong hastily threw up his arms in a purely token defense.
"It's a joke! I only brought it to tease you!"
I let out a long breath, banked my temper, and spoke.
"They say you shouldn't even prank a dog when it comes to its food..."
"Well, that's because it's you, Young Master."
I glared at him — not a hair out of place, utterly unrepentant — then tipped back my cup.
"Young Master. We're drinking together here. You really ought to toast."
"Oh, to hell with toasting. Just drink."
"Don't be like that..."
And so the two of us traded banter as cup after cup went down.
How much did we drink? Once the wine had worked its way in, a flush crept up both our faces.
With my head pleasantly buzzing, I asked him the thing that had been on my mind.
"Come to think of it — do you know anything about my brother? I've asked before, but between my sister and the Red Heaven Squad Leader, nobody would give me a straight answer."
At my out-of-the-blue question, Giyeong set down his cup, pondered for a long moment, and answered.
"Young Master Mujin was a good man."
There was something distant in his expression, as if he were gazing at something far away.
"His character was finer than anyone's, his looks were finer than anyone's, and his martial arts were more outstanding than anyone's..."
The pointed comparison to yours truly earned him a distinctly sour look, at which he smiled genially and continued.
"That was a joke... Anyway, there were those who said he'd be the next Number One Under Heaven."
The man who always wore that flippant grin smiled now with a trace of bitterness, and his words trailed off.
His voice seemed to catch in his throat. Only after he'd scraped the bottom of the jug to fill one more cup and downed it did he finally speak.
"He was caught up in a rather unfortunate accident, some time back... Within the clan, speaking of that incident is all but taboo. That's why no one was willing to answer you."
I had never seen him so heavy-hearted. I said nothing, only listened, and the mood sank deep around us.
Then, to shatter it, Giyeong flashed his flippant grin once more.
"Ah... we're out of wine. I'll run down and bring back some more, right quick."
"You're really going to hike all the way down and back up?"
"I'm rather quick on my feet — it won't take long. For all my looks, I'm one of the fastest runners among the Dang Clan's squad leaders."
"There are only five squad leaders. What exactly is there to count on one hand..."
I said it, but I still gave him a lazy wave of go-on-then, tipped back yet another cup, and turned my gaze to the scenery.
Before I knew it, the sun had all but set and the sky had gone dark — though a snow mountain by night had its own charm, I decided, sipping alone at the hermitage.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Footsteps approached, and I answered without even bothering to look in that direction.
"Back already? You really are fast."
Thudthudthudthudthud.
But the footsteps sounded strangely overlapped — too many sets of them — and I slowly shook off my drunken haze as I turned around.
"Ugh... why is it always me this shit happens to."
Figures clad head to toe in black, masks pulled over their faces, had the hermitage surrounded on every side. As the curse left my mouth, a man standing at their head spoke in a low voice.
"Kill him."
Before the word had even finished leaving his mouth, the masked men threw themselves at me all at once.
"Ha... don't tell me you're the Demonic Cult?"
I tossed the question out to sound them out, but they offered no reply — they simply drove their blades at me.
"So Dang Giyeong really was the villain all along..."
Cursing that slit-eyed bastard — the ringleader, clearly — I flicked my hand toward the man charging in at the very front.
"Gyaaagh!"
The moment the dark-red energy coiling around my hand touched his blade, it melted the steel as though doused in acid — and when it reached his face, the stench of liquefying flesh and a scream of pure agony rang out across the hermitage.
They all staggered back at the gruesome sight, and I waved my hand about, shaking it off.
"What are you waiting for? Shall I come to you, then?"
At those words, the man who seemed to be their leader at last drew his sword and roared.
"All of you, charge him together! The first man to hesitate, I'll cut down myself!"
"Some commander you are. Never heard that loving your men is loving your country, did you?"
My jab accomplished precisely nothing. The masked men glanced at one another for a heartbeat, then came at me again in a rush.
"Tsk... is swarming your enemy in a horde just the factory default for you Central Plains types?"
My head was still fogged with wine, and I wanted the dangerous one cleared away first — so I blew straight past the cannon fodder and charged the man barking orders from the rear.
He plainly hadn't expected me to come for him; a flicker of panic crossed his face before he steadied himself and brought his sword down on my head.
"Hyaap!"
An ink-black wave of sword qi came hurtling down at me with his fierce cry — and I pressed in even closer instead.
In a blink I was inside his guard, and before he could recover his blade, he took my strike square in the chest.
WHAM—
He rocketed backward with a bone-rattling boom and slammed into a tree, pinned there, dying. I muttered, genuinely puzzled.
"Seriously... what even are you people? How are you this weak?"
I was scratching my head at a situation I couldn't begin to make sense of, when—
"Heh heh... I told you to wait for your old father, and here you are, already getting started."
The voice came suddenly from behind me — from a back that hadn't sensed so much as a breath of it. I turned my head—
"Huh?"
— and in the next instant my world flipped upside down, and all I could see was a body, standing there, its owner gone.