The Blue Emperor and the Ashen Swordsman
"Why are you beautiful?"
The girl demanded it of the woman who held the spear. She demanded an answer.
She had lost everything.
So why was the one who had done this to her so beautiful?
This was the unforgivable person who had taken it all — so why was she not hideous? Why was she beautiful?
If she had been ugly, it would have been so much simpler.
"You more than I."
Looking down at the child, the emperor spoke from the heart.
She was nothing. An ordinary child. Unadorned, and not born with any remarkable face.
And yet — why were those gray eyes fixed upon her so lovely?
Geon had been an anomalous nation, held together by the colossal personal might of its emperor.
The first emperor of Geon had been one who pacified an age of chaos with power granted by the heavens, and that power had passed unbroken to each successive sovereign.
Thus the emperor was absolute.
Gayul was the reigning emperor.
She was beautiful, yet those who had ever beheld her imperial countenance were vanishingly few.
Hoeyeon was a girl of a minority people. Her hair was gray, her eyes were gray, and so gray had been written into her name.
The first time their faces met was atop a heap of ash.
That ash had once been the village where Hoeyeon lived. Because the village leader had taken part in a conspiracy, the emperor herself had come.
Gayul was beautiful, and strong, and looked bored.
Hoeyeon wanted revenge.
But even if Gayul had stood perfectly still, she would not have been able to pierce so much as that fair, fine skin.
Grief for her lost family. Rage. The helplessness of being able to do nothing — and still, through it all, the beauty of the blue woman that stirred her heart against her will.
Hoeyeon could not endure it without demanding to know why she was beautiful.
To Gayul, those words had sounded beautiful.
Not because she had been praised. Gayul already knew that she was beautiful.
It was the expression on the girl's face as she spoke them, the feeling, the will — those had looked beautiful. And so Gayul answered, You more than I, and asked:
"Do you wish to kill me?"
Hoeyeon nodded.
"If you wish to kill me, will you follow me?"
Gayul added hastily:
"I shall keep you at my side. Is it not easiest to kill someone when you are closest to them?"
Hoeyeon gazed up into Gayul's blue eyes for a long while, deliberating — then squeezed her eyes shut hard.
"It's the opposite."
"…So you think."
Then there was nothing to be done.
Gayul turned on her heel.
She was aware of it herself — a sweet, aching flame kindling in her chest.
But what the nature of that flame truly was, even the emperor did not know.
And was that not fine?
Because she did not know, she could anticipate — and anticipation was a pleasure.
As she walked away, Gayul thought of the ashen girl she had met that day.
From then on, Gayul would keep recalling that girl from her memory. Whenever she was on the verge of forgetting, the girl would surface again, and she would be unable to forget.
But she did not yet know that. For the first time, Gayul simply thought of her.
Ten years passed.
Hoeyeon had become an adult. She had met a master who saw the talent within her, and she had learned the sword as if her life depended on it.
She had awakened a gift she had not even known she possessed, and after defeating one strong opponent after another, she found herself, at some point, held in respect by other swordsmen.
Geon had fallen ten years ago.
The reason was that the emperor of that time had vanished without a trace. A nation made unshakable by one person's might had crumbled in an instant the moment that person disappeared.
The realm had plunged into chaos, then recovered its order.
And now, the sword was what put food on Hoeyeon's table.
"Master! Good morning!!"
"Mm. Sleep well?"
When she arrived at the dojo, her disciples greeted her. Earnest, grateful souls, up so early.
Originally it had been the dojo her master had built, left to her when that person passed from the world. But without disciples who wished to learn from her, she clearly could never have kept it going.
It was a bright autumn day.
Hoeyeon looked up at the sky and thought.
It had been autumn that day, too — she was certain of it.
I never imagined things would turn out like this.
Her dream of becoming an official had been trampled by the age, and the revenge she had carried in her chest had lost its target and grown hazy.
But the talent and the bonds she had found along the way had shaped the everyday life she lived now.
"I'm heading to the marketplace for a bit."
"Take care!"
After instructing her disciples all morning, Hoeyeon left the dojo.
I've done everything I needed to, but I still feel bad.
Going to the marketplace itself was no problem. The reason she was going was the problem.
It was the day her favorite confectionery shop released a new product.
"A teacher with her mind elsewhere is a danger."
Right, right. Even as she made excuses to herself, Hoeyeon pulled her bamboo hat down as low as it would go.
When she arrived at a hurried pace, the place was noisier than usual.
What? Did someone show up?
As Hoeyeon wondered, the talk of the people around her drove itself into her ears.
"Did you see her too?"
"I saw her, I saw her! An absurd beauty, she was!"
There was no one in this town beautiful enough to cause this kind of stir, and if a major merchant caravan had come through, she would have heard the noise of the whole party — wouldn't she?
Hoeyeon's question was answered soon enough.
There was a woman.
Her clothes looked like a beggar's. The shabby garments were torn in places, soiled with dirt and dust.
And yet — a vivid color that seized the eye.
Blue. Her hair was a deep, pure blue, and her eyes were a deep, pure blue.
And setting the color aside, looking at her face alone — it was a beauty that would rank among the handful of most beautiful in the entire country.
"!!"
The moment she saw that face, the shock was so great that Hoeyeon's world stopped for an instant.
It's her.
The woman who, ten years ago, had held a great spear and turned a village to ash. The last emperor of Geon, who had vanished without warning.
That blue she had seen that day. That unforgettable hue.
And a face identical to the one carved into her mind.
But it's been ten years.
If it were the same person, it was a span of time over which the face should not still match.
Her heart was pounding so hard it felt as though it would shatter her ribs and burst from her chest.
The blue woman sat on the dirt floor like a cat basking in the sun, quietly watching the marketplace.
People around her were saying things to her, but she responded to no one's words.
Then her gaze found Hoeyeon — and fixed on her.
Every surrounding eye gathered on Hoeyeon at once. Someone spoke.
"Isn't that Master Cheon?"
Even with her bamboo hat pulled low, her identity had been found out. Hoeyeon flustered.
"Wh— no, I—"
"At last. I have found you."
The woman's voice rang out.
That jewel-like voice was the same as it had been ten years ago.
The woman rose from where she sat, walked toward Hoeyeon, and stopped directly before her.
She no longer had to look up quite as far as she had ten years ago.
Even so, to meet those blue eyes, she still had to tilt her gaze slightly upward.
Hoeyeon had no choice but to believe it now.
The person standing before her was the woman who, ten years ago, had taken everything from her.
And yet from her she felt no killing intent, no hostility of any kind.
And Hoeyeon, too, could not bring herself to harbor killing intent or hostility toward the woman before her eyes.
"You have grown splendidly, have you not."
In the woman's blue eyes, for a single instant, the Hoeyeon of ten years ago and the Hoeyeon of now seemed to overlap.
A tingling, crackling sensation rose up her spine as if static were climbing her vertebrae.
It was not the chill of fear.
This was, rather—
"You."
The woman who had been emperor made her proposal to Hoeyeon.
With a clearer emotion in her voice than when she had made a different proposal ten years ago.
"Will you not have me?"
What was the nature of that emotion?
And why could neither she nor Hoeyeon herself harbor hostility?
"Who are you?"
This was different from ten years ago, when they could not become enemies.
The Hoeyeon of now could face Gayul as an opponent. Both Hoeyeon and the Gayul standing before her knew it.
Hoeyeon had grown strong — incomparably so.
And Gayul had grown weak.
And yet — why.
"I am but a girl with nothing to her name and nowhere to go."
Was the content of those words mockery, or sincerity?
"I told you to have me."
To know, she would have to probe.
"If I were to have you — what's the price?"
Sweat ran down her back.
"The price. Should any other seek to purchase me, even a mountain of gold would not suffice."
Gayul said.
"But for you — I might well accept anything at all."
"…Anything?"
"Indeed. Anything."
Was that, in turn, a probe of her own?
"You might stack a great sum, or a single copper coin. A single leaf, a chip of stone — or even a single word, a single scrap of fingernail. Any of those, too, I might accept."
The woman who had been emperor was asking Hoeyeon.
Upon the other side of the scale on which I have placed myself — what will you set?
She had said she would accept whatever it was. She had never said she would be satisfied by it.
It was hot. The day was cool, yet her body burned.
Her breath scorched. Sweet. It burned sweetly.
"Do I have to answer now?"
"I would have you answer now."
Hoeyeon bit her lip once, released it, and exhaled — as if trying to push every last bit of the heat from her lungs out with her breath.
"I refuse."
Gayul blinked, as though she could not grasp the meaning of what Hoeyeon had just said.
"Refuse — meaning?"
Even now, Hoeyeon still had to look up at Gayul.
But unlike then, they were nearly the same height.
"I refuse to have you. Then there's nothing I need to offer as a price."