From Now On, Kill Each Other
"From now on, kill each other."
Where does the story begin? Well… deep in the mountains seems as good a place as any.
Everything was as ordinary as it ever was.
The men pushing through the foothills moved with the ease of those long familiar with the tangled landscape. Their numbers exceeded thirty. Each face carried a certain hardness — not quite veterans of a hundred battles, but men who had weathered their share of skirmishes, large and small. Even if enemies twice their number fell upon them, they could fight their way clear. Of that, there was little doubt.
But there were things even they could not overcome.
Thunder rolled across the heavens with the weight of judgment about to fall, and rain was certain to follow before long. Natural disasters were something even seasoned men like these could not simply shrug off.
At the head of the column walked a middle-aged man with red hair — Jang Chil. He knew the signs well enough. Clicking his tongue, he scanned the surroundings.
Better find cover before it hits.
Nothing in sight offered a workable solution. Irritation surged up through him. Had he known it would come to this, he never would have taken the job.
If I hadn't needed the money so badly. Damn it — newlywed life is hard enough. Especially lately, with the house and all the problems that came with it.
He raked a hand through his hair and muttered under his breath.
"Got to push through for my wife's sake. Might as well think of these next few days as already dead."
"Sir? What was that?"
One of the men beside him turned at the remark. Jang Chil waved it off as nothing, and the fellow let it drop. With every eye on him, even talking to himself was a luxury he couldn't afford. He exhaled and ordered his thoughts.
In every undertaking, time was everything. Time was gold — wasn't that the saying? This particular commission paid the same whether finished early or late, so haste was pure profit. That was why they had pressed on without rest from the moment they entered the mountains. Now, though, there was nothing for it.
He didn't know this terrain well enough to navigate it alone. He would have to ask.
Jang Chil beckoned his second-in-command with a gesture.
"Anyone among us who knows this area? I've only been through here once or twice."
"I'll find someone, sir."
The lieutenant set about checking. Before long he returned with a man in tow and offered a brief introduction.
"Says he used to take this road often when he worked elsewhere. Looks sharp enough."
"I was told you wanted me, sir."
"Mm. Know any decent caves around here?"
The man gave a slight nod.
"I found one once, years back, looking for shelter from the rain. Memory's hazy, but I know the general direction."
"Good. Lead the way."
"Head north. You'll come across a cluster of rocks about the same size, packed close together. Find those and you're there."
"North, you say?"
Manjang Cliff lay to the north as well. Coincidence, no doubt — but an oddly pointed one all the same.
They set out under the guide's direction. Not long after, the man spoke up again.
"One more thing to watch for, sir."
"Watch for?"
"Yes. The path cuts through the Dong Family Stronghold's territory. Nasty bunch. Back when I worked for a merchant caravan, negotiating with them was always a headache."
"No need to worry about that. They swagger around calling themselves Green Forest bandits, but out here on the frontier they're nothing special."
He had no particular desire to fight — but neither did he intend to simply yield. Protocol first, if possible. If talks broke down, though, he would not shy from bloodshed. The blood on his hands already numbered well into double digits.
Rustle. Rustle.
Speak of the tiger and it appears, as the saying went.
Of course. Nothing was ever going to be that easy.
Jang Chil frowned and fixed his gaze on a distant thicket that had begun to sway. What emerged from it was a man — or something that might have been a man. Every inch of him, save for the eyes, was wrapped tight in black cloth. A navy-blue willow-leaf saber hung at his waist. Strange, indecipherable characters were painted across the black fabric of his clothes, each one shaped with deliberate care.
More assassin than bandit, by the look of him.
Still, that shouldn't have been a problem.
…Until Jang Chil saw the eyes.
What the—
Beneath that blank surface seethed a concentrated, savage killing intent — something dense and distilled. The gleaming red irises made the danger plain.
I have to run. Now.
The thought rose on pure instinct, and for a heartbeat he nearly acted on it — only to realize the dream was already dead.
"Never seen a mark quite like this before."
A mid-to-low voice. The important part was how much closer it sounded than it should have.
When did he get this close?
Jang Chil swallowed dryly. A cold bead of sweat traced down his temple.
"Well now. I hadn't planned on dealing with one more."
Jang Chil carefully clasped his fists in formal greeting.
"I pay my respects to the Master."
"Hmm. I'm not quite at the level of a Master, I'd say."
The black-clothed man waved a hand as he spoke, and there was a surprising sincerity to the gesture. Master or not, though, the danger he represented was the same either way.
"So. What are you lot doing here?"
"We are the Shinnam Escort Agency. We're transporting a quantity of grain—"
"That's enough. Never heard of you."
The black-clothed man gave a short, dry laugh.
"Meaning I can touch you without much consequence, is that it?"
"W-wait!"
"Hmm?"
"The party that commissioned our agency is the Seok Family Estate! I don't know who you are, Master — no, sir — but if this goes wrong, the Seok Family itself could get involved."
"A threat. No — closer to begging. In which case, three corrections are in order."
The corners of the black-clothed man's eyes curved upward.
"The Seok Family. I've heard of them, sure. Western magnates, aren't they? But wealth has never stood above martial power. Merchants can thrash all they like — they'll never rise past second-rate."
"W-what's the second?"
"Even if it weren't the Seok Family — even if you threw out the name of a great sect or a noble clan — it still wouldn't stop me. I've never cared about such things in my life. If you want to pressure me that way, at least bring the principal himself. Then I might consider it. Consider it, mind you."
"I'd like to hear the third as well."
"The type who needs the whole list before he can rest easy? Fine. Your framing was wrong. An estate like the Seok Family doesn't lose sleep over one or two commissions. And frankly, I doubt it was even them."
He answers in this much detail just because I asked…
Jang Chil had already suspected as much before the man finished speaking. Once the words ended, the certainty settled fully into place.
There was no way left for him to live. It wasn't that he had overreached. This had been decided long before now — written somewhere in the past.
He let out a hollow laugh. He had never imagined his end would look like this.
His hand closed around the pendant at his chest — the one bearing a portrait of the daughter born only days ago.
"May I leave a last word?"
"No."
Shiiing—!
The willow-leaf saber was already drawn, carving a clean arc through the air. Where it passed, a navy-blue trail hung in its wake — and what remained was a fountain of blood where a neck had been. Jang Chil's head struck the ground, the expression of regret and horror still fixed upon it for every man present to see.
There was a boy.
Through half-lidded eyes, he looked out on a world steeped in weariness. His build was ordinary, no different from anyone else's, and his clothes were shabby. And yet something about him carried an old, refined air.
Life never does go the way you want it to.
All he had wanted was a quiet, ordinary existence. How he had ended up in a situation like this, he could not begin to say.
Is this bad luck too?
The beautiful young man with the lazy eyes gave a faint, crooked smile.
Ill fortune had dogged him from the start.
They said I came down with a fever the day I was born and lay sick for ten straight days. First brush with death, right out of the gate.
Growing up, he had tripped over a stone and fallen — only to find a massive boulder waiting where he landed. Bird droppings found him on ordinary walks as a matter of course. Once, he had even been swept into a brawl while eating at a roadside shop.
Days without incident were the rare ones. No single mishap was catastrophic on its own — but the fact that all of them had happened to one person was proof enough of the curse he carried. Finding someone unluckier than him across the entire murim would be like hunting for a needle in a desert. It wasn't even funny.
Anyone who learned the full shape of his life might well call his mere survival a miracle.
Which was why he should never have let his guard down. Two months without a major disaster should have been cause for suspicion, not relief.
The worst scenario he could have imagined. In this single moment, the greatest crisis of his entire life.
I need a way out.
Beyond begging the black-clothed man for mercy, was there anything left to try? And that after the man had already killed someone.
Even as he sighed inwardly, events — and time — refused to wait.
"You've got some sense, at least."
The black-clothed man cast a glance around. A few faces had gone deathly pale, but no one was foolish enough to make a sudden move. They could still manage the bare minimum of judgment, then.
"Fine. You're worth keeping alive. Not all of you, of course."
Half the present number.
Until the numbers had dropped enough to satisfy him.
At those words, the air turned to ice.