Not long after, the door opened with a rusty screeech.
No light entered from beyond the doorframe. Sa-hyeon’s eyes traveled up from the newcomer’s feet, along his legs, and fixed on his face.
And immediately, he turned his head away.
“Are you awake? Sorry for putting you in such a shabby place. We didn’t have a choice. We’ve been staying somewhere that’s practically a rat’s nest ourselves.”
A voice gentle to the point of nausea drifted over.
Sa-hyeon gritted his teeth and endured until the man stopped in front of him. Fighting the reflexive tremor in his fingertips and toes, he tried not to stutter as he spoke, chewing each syllable before forcing it out.
“Why… why am I… in this place?”
“Ah, really. I can’t even breathe with this mold smell. This is why I can’t sleep with my back on the floor. How do you endure a place like this?”
His first attempt was ignored completely.
Ok-ri grumbled openly, looking around Sa-hyeon’s vicinity with irritation.
Frightened by the illusion of long ago, Sa-hyeon snapped his mouth shut, then asked again, stubbornly. His heart pounded and his back was damp, but he had no intention of crumbling so easily this time.
“…Who are you?”
“That’s exactly what I wanted to ask. Fainting the moment you saw someone’s face was rather hurtful. So while you were unconscious, I looked around to make sense of it…”
Namgung Ok-ri gathered his robes so they wouldn’t touch the floor and bent at the waist. He seized Sa-hyeon’s face, which kept trying to avoid his gaze, and forced it around to meet his eyes. Studying the hostility of someone who didn’t even know how to be angry, as if it were a toy, he let out a light laugh.
“Heavenly Treasure Blade Lim Sa-hyeon. Young Hero Lim. Right?”
“…”
“A large physique, currently in Guangdong Province, wearing a peony-knot of direct-disciple rank and carrying a saber, a man of capping age. The rumors were widespread, so it wasn’t even difficult. Everyone really liked you. It pains me to treat such an extraordinary, righteous young pillar of the Gangho poorly.”
“I’m not c-curious about that. Why did you… put me here?”
Why can’t I feel my inner energy? Who are you, and who is that boy? Why are you tormenting me again, across twenty years?
Being stabbed out of nowhere while walking down the street would have made more sense than this. Sa-hyeon’s throat bobbed. Ok-ri straightened, expression turning cynical, crossed his arms, and continued with only what he wanted to say.
“I suffered from an illness for a long time and couldn’t come outside. It’s been a long twenty years since I’ve seen my father’s face, let alone the rising stars of the current Murim. So I was very, very… curious. Why you were so shaken when you saw me.”
“…”
“It would be impossible unless I was someone you met before I got sick. But back then, you would’ve been nothing but a five-year-old brat at most. Right?”
“…I d-don’t know who you are.”
“But when I think about it… coincidentally, there was exactly one ‘five-year-old brat’ I met before I fell ill.”
It felt as if Sa-hyeon’s heart dropped into his stomach. Even if every last drop of blood drained out of him, it would have been less horrifying than this.
Sa-hyeon lowered his gaze to the floor and bit his lower lip. Namgung Ok-ri took in his reaction with meticulous care, then continued, as if driving a wedge deeper.
“It was an incident that happened right here in Guangdong Province. I was staying at a fairly decent inn with my older brother. It was a night no different from any other. But…”
“…”
“My goodness, a rat appeared. In a place that prided itself on cleanliness, a rat this big. Isn’t it huge? You can’t believe it, right?”
Ok-ri held his palm out around his waist to indicate the size.
“What a huge, careless rat it was. I could hear it scuttling through the storage and the hallways, but I held back at first. I couldn’t very well catch some dirty bastard that gnawed on rotten fish with my own hands. I meant to turn a blind eye if it left on its own…”
But this filthy beast dared to covet my room.
Namgung Ok-ri snorted.
Amid his dizzyingly crushed thoughts, Sa-hyeon tried to imagine what someone else would do in this situation. His master would never have been caught by someone like this in the first place, and even if he had been, he would probably have laid them all out with a single exhalation. His junior brother, whom he hadn’t seen in a long time and who had grown to the point that winning seemed unimaginable, would surely handle it well on his own, as always.
And his sister…
At that moment, Namgung Ok-ri grabbed Sa-hyeon’s hair and yanked it back. Sa-hyeon’s head snapped up helplessly; his molars clenched with a harsh grind. Ok-ri whispered beneath Sa-hyeon’s chin, voice slick with malice.
“It’s you. Right?”
“…”
“You’re that brat. That dirty, filthy thief who was worse than a bug.”
“…I’m not.”
“Then how did you survive? I definitely killed you. Even if you lived, I made sure you couldn’t function as a human being, yet you grew up so splendidly. I was really surprised.”
Ok-ri’s eyes swept over Sa-hyeon’s sturdy body, lingering here and there.
“Isn’t it impossible unless you had some tremendous fortuitous encounter, or ate an amazing spiritual medicine? Tell me. Which is it?”
“…I-I said I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie!”
As Sa-hyeon stubbornly denied it, the toe of Ok-ri’s shoe slammed into his waist without hesitation. Perhaps his talk of being bedridden for a long time wasn’t empty, because there wasn’t much force behind it. Still, the pain was better than being crushed by the memories that followed.
A figure with a familiar face loomed over him, beating him unilaterally. Even knowing reality had changed, the past overlapped his vision. His whole body grew heavy with damp helplessness. Namgung Ok-ri, oblivious to Lim Sa-hyeon’s state, poured out his own fury, kicking and punching again and again.
“Tell me! Speak! It wasn’t a fortuitous encounter. You ate a spiritual medicine, didn’t you? Otherwise, how could that dirty beggar brat have a body like this? How could he gain such renown? I lost sixteen years of my life, yet someone like you! Even the martial arts I achieved turned to nothing, yet something like you! A maggot who did nothing but steal on the streets!”
And amid the raining blows, Lim Sa-hyeon didn’t utter a single groan.
In the end, Ok-ri was the first to tire. Namgung Ok-ri shook out his stinging hand and stumbled back, gasping. If Sa-hyeon were still the brat from back then, he would have died quickly from even this. Seeing Sa-hyeon far too intact only stirred a cruel irritation. But his own body was useless now, which meant it was time to change tactics.
After a long while, Ok-ri softened his voice again, as if soothing him.
“…I just want to know what spiritual medicine you ate. I’m curious what kind of medicine saved you when you were practically dead, what put flesh back on bone. If you tell me, I’ll let you go. I don’t have the strength to do anything to you anymore. You know that.”
“…”
“And I won’t ever enter Guangdong Province again, either. Hmm? So tell me.”
From whom did you receive it? What kind of medicine was it?
Or where did you find it?
The questions clung, tenacious and sticky. Sa-hyeon’s lips, motionless as his head stayed half-bowed in shock, twitched slightly.
Namgung Ok-ri brightened. He bent at the waist again and brought his ear close to Sa-hyeon.
If he learned what saved this lowly pauper, it could help the Honored One his father revered so much. Perhaps he could earn his father’s recognition. With that favor, he could solidify his position in the clan again and enjoy glory even without his dust-covered martial arts. Tae-woon had said Sa-hyeon seemed like a more decent rising star than expected, but he was a petty thief by origin, after all. And if he was relying on the Hao Sect, a place worse than a gutter, wasn’t that proof enough?
Ok-ri, who couldn’t possibly know how the Hao Sect’s reputation had changed over time, drowned in a sweet dream, presuming the shape of his own future and Sa-hyeon’s life. Trying to catch a voice he couldn’t hear well, he leaned closer, closer still.
However, from the moment the indiscriminate blows began, Sa-hyeon had been thinking of only one thing.
How would my sister have acted?
A strange sound rang out in the narrow gap between them, like cartilage crushing, like silk tearing.
Like a wet sack being mashed.
Like thin-skinned fruit bursting.
“Aaaaagh!”
Screaming loudly enough to echo through the ruins, Ok-ri fell onto his backside and scrambled back. Fresh red blood surged between the fingers clamped over his cheek and ear. Namgung Ok-ri crawled across the floor, his screams breaking into wordless noises. His fingertips trembled, unable to even touch the wound that burned with atrocious pain.
Lim Sa-hyeon stared at him, then chewed the piece of flesh in his mouth with a wet squelch, squelch and spat it onto the dusty floor.
A disgusting metallic stench flooded his mouth and spilled onto his chin, but he didn’t care.
Sa-hyeon had never committed murder in secret, never used unjust violence, and in his short twenty years, had never once plotted to harm another. He had lived so docilely that being scolded for being too naive still felt like yesterday, and he had never truly hated anyone.
But the eyes fixed on Namgung Ok-ri, whose face was torn open on one side, held glistening venom even in the dark.
It was an expression that resembled his master, unrivaled in strength; his sister, unstoppable in ruthlessness; and his junior brother, unmatched in coldness.