Chapter 4

“What in the world…?”

Big Bro Un-cheon’s eyes went round.

“What is it?”

— Shff-shff-shff—

I darted back and forth, left and right, saying it as I moved. My voice didn’t waver in the slightest, and my quick footwork kicked up great clouds of dust. Much more of this and I’d have a sandstorm going.

Big Bro Un-cheon watched it in silence, eyes startled, then abruptly swung a foot at me. I flinched back in fright and got clear of it.

“Oh-ho. Look at you.”

His eyebrows went up.

— Whoosh— Whoosh—

His arms and legs lashed out like whips. I barely evaded the first three before a kick caught my calf and sent me rolling across the ground.

“Khek….”

The dust was thick enough already, and I got a mouthful of it, coughing hard. He stared at me like a man looking at a ghost.

“You… what are you? How does a person change overnight like this?”
“You’re the one who told me to drill it until I had it down, aren’t you? I did exactly what you said, so what’s the problem?”

I grumbled as I picked myself up.

“No. I’ll stake my word on it. That is not a level you reach by working at it. Give me your hand.”

Big Bro Un-cheon laid his fingers on my wrist the way a physician takes a pulse, and closed his eyes. A cool, bracing energy came in through my wrist and went circling through my body, made one full circuit, and left again the way it had come.

“Well?”
“You… what on earth did you do.”

His face was frighteningly set as he said it.

“Wh-what is it?”

Was it something that serious? I was starting to get a little scared.

“I told you. That you’ve got no talent for martial arts.”
“Yes. You did.”

Which left me pretty crushed, thanks.

“Not anymore.”
“Sorry?”
“You’re a genius of martial arts. Bones heaven itself made for it.”
“…!”

That much? Sure, I’d woken up today feeling a bit lighter than usual, my eyes clearer, my sight somehow thrown wide open. But was it that big a thing?

“Strange. When I looked yesterday it was miserable talent, doubtful whether it would even reach third-rate. Am I to think I read it wrong? There’s no way….”
“…Um. Excuse me.”

Big Bro Un-cheon went on muttering, “There’s no way. I’m telling you there’s no way,” while kneading away at my arms and legs.

“Has something changed?”
“A great deal has changed. Your very constitution is different. You really did nothing?”
“What could I even do if I wanted to? I just went to sleep and got up like always.”

I played dumb without batting an eye. The fewer people who know about the laser, the better.

“Is this the Heavenly Martial Body I’ve only ever heard spoken of…? Unbelievable.”

He kept muttering words I couldn’t follow, wearing the gravest face in the world. I put a question to him.

“So — do I show a bit of promise now?”
“Does it ever.”

I wanted to loosen the grim look on his face, so I asked playfully:

“Then how far can I go now? First-rate?”
“No.”
“Pfft. So it’s second-rate after all? And here I was….”

Big Bro Un-cheon looked me straight in the eye.

“Peak-stage master.”
“P-peak-stage master?”
“No — beyond that isn’t a dream, either.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded.

“You’re… joking, right?”
“Do I look to you like a man who’s joking?”

Only then did I grasp something of how serious this was. Peak-stage master, and beyond that?

“B-but yesterday you said starting late put me at a huge disadvantage?”
“With martial talent like this, starting a little late isn’t even a problem. You’ll catch up in no time at all.”

My heart pounded.

“Then hurry up and teach me the next thing.”
“No.”
“Sorry?”
“You’re past the level I’m able to teach.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m not a vessel big enough to hold you. You need to learn martial arts properly, in a proper place. Somewhere with a name you’d know the moment you heard it — one of the great orthodox sects. If that lot got a look at you they’d find some way to take you in as an adopted son. No — never mind this. What’s the nearest one from here? Right, the Moyong Family, was it? Right this minute—”

— Smack.

I shook off the hand pulling at mine. Then I looked Big Bro Un-cheon straight in the eye and said:

“I don’t want to.”
“…What?”
“The place I was born and raised is right here, the Peace Inn. I’ve no intention of leaving. And if I go, what happens to our poor boss?”
“You little fool….”

Big Bro Un-cheon set about talking me round in a low, patient voice. What an enormous opportunity this was, why I needed to find a proper master as soon as possible and hone my martial arts in a proper setting, and so on.

But what did any of that have to do with anything?

I’m a waiter.

I’m decent at cooking, and cooking is a pleasure to me. I want to cook hard and earn money, and with that money build the inn up big. An inn as peaceful as its name says, where the likes of murim warriors can’t come and go as they please. I want to make it so our boss can chatter away with the customers all day long without a worry.

That’s enough for me. Is that such a greedy thing to want?

And above all, I hate the whole breed called murim warriors (Big Bro Un-cheon excepted, of course). If I went off with Big Bro Un-cheon now, it feels like I’d become exactly that murim warrior I hate.

“I don’t want to. I said I don’t want to. I’m the Peace Inn’s waiter, is what I am.”

In the end, for all his persuading, Big Bro Un-cheon couldn’t break my stubbornness.

“Haa… fine. Stubborn little mule. Have it your way.”

I grinned.

“They do say it’s the stubborn ones who change the world.”
“Where did you hear a thing like that?”
“Good question. So you’ll keep teaching me martial arts, then?”
“If you’re pounding the ground with regret later on, that’s not my problem.”
“Meeting you at all was my good luck, Big Bro. Regret, he says.”

Big Bro Un-cheon let out a laugh like air leaking from a punctured balloon, then ruffled my hair into a mess.

“If only the brat couldn’t talk.”

But on the martial arts he didn’t budge.

“For now I’ll teach you the basics and nothing more.”
“Why won’t you teach me your martial arts? Are you being stingy about it?”
“Stinginess isn’t the problem. Mine’s too much of a mongrel mix for a genius like you to be learning.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I mind, that’s why. Anyway — when I say no, take it as no.”

There was nothing to be done. Big Bro Un-cheon was the master, after all. A disciple only learns.

Once we’d settled it that way, I headed up the mountain.

“Where are you off to?”
“Going to dig up some wild greens.”
“Want me to come along?”
“I’m fine.”

Alone up the mountain, I dug greens for a while, then looked around me.

Nobody around, right?

I looked down at my hand. A plain, roughly made ring sat on my index finger.

— Tap-tap—

At a couple of short taps the ring glowed softly on and off, showing how much battery it had. There was next to nothing.

That’s right. The laser gun had turned into this ring. I don’t understand the principle behind it either.

When I woke up the laser gun was gone and only the ring was left. It had performed some ‘procedure’ on me the night before, and it must have poured all three bars of its battery into it. And firing off that terrifying laser only cost one bar. All three of them at once. I couldn’t begin to guess what it had done.

Whatever it did, the room was reeking of something vile with a burnt edge to it that morning, and I spent forever with the window thrown wide, airing the place out. If the boss had caught it, he’d have been ribbing me about shitting myself at my age for years.

When I turned my hand over, an intricate mechanism surfaced on my palm and sat there as naturally as skin. Ordinarily it was invisible; it showed itself the moment I meant to work it. The principle behind that one is beyond me too.

“Amazing.”

Was the thing some marvel from beyond the heavens? I fiddled with the mechanism on my palm and jabbed at the lower part of it.

— Pshoo!

“Whoa!”

A laser burst out of the soles of my feet and I was up in the air in an instant.

“Whuh—!”

I flailed my arms and legs in midair, then dropped straight back down.

— Crash-bang!

— Beep— Beep—

The battery had been close to zero already. Now it blinked to announce that it was well and truly zero.

I-I nearly died.

I couldn’t call it anything but lucky. With more battery in it I might have shot up into the sky in an instant and fallen to my death.

“…I’d better learn how to use this properly.”

Covered in dirt, I muttered it up at the sky.

The next day.

“Something’s come up. I’ll be gone a while.”

Big Bro Un-cheon left the inn. It probably had something to do with my martial talent. The boss and I had no choice but to let him go; we couldn’t have stopped him in the first place.

Murim warriors.

He’d said he stayed as he pleased. He left as he pleased, too.

Still, there was nothing to feel uneasy about just because Big Bro Un-cheon was away a while. Thanks to him living here and smashing every black-path thug who came calling, word must have got around, because not one of them would show his face near the place anymore. The government offices must have got wind of it as well; people in official’s robes were in and out often enough.

Officialdom and murim, mutually inviolable — wasn’t that the phrase?

It means the government and the gangho don’t get involved with each other. I don’t know the details, but the boss said there was no need to worry: no murim warrior, whoever he might be, could act as he liked while an official was present. And I’d seen it myself, back when even the Black Dog Gang’s thugs would slink out of the way at the sight of anyone in official’s robes.

Nothing’s going to happen, right?

Surely nothing was going to happen in the little while Big Bro Un-cheon was away.

“Gwang-seon! One stir-fried bok choy over here!”
“Yessir! Right out!”

And so the days went by, business as brisk as any other day.

— BANG!

The door was flung roughly open and a man came in. He was a giant, a good two heads taller than me, so huge that the doorway itself looked cramped. The boisterous chatter cut off dead at the clamor of his entrance, and every eye in the room turned at once.

“I heard the bastard’s here.”

The boss asked:

“Wh-who might you be looking for…?”
“The Cold Moon Wanderer. Where is he.”

…A murim warrior.

Of all the times.

I ground my teeth.

“Great Hero Cold Moon Wanderer has business elsewhere and is away for a short while. When he returns I’ll be sure to tell him— khuhk!”

— Crash-bang!

Kicked by the giant of a murim warrior, the boss slammed into a table and went sprawling.

“Pops!”

Cooking be damned, I ran to the boss. Someone shot to their feet and jabbed a finger at the man who’d done it.

“What is the meaning of this, in broad daylight! Have you no fear of heaven!”

I wondered who was brave enough to take him to task, and it turned out to be a man in an official’s robes. The face was familiar, a regular who’d come by any number of times. I remembered him praising me once, saying that a young lad like me made such tasty food.

“What is this sudden outrage! Get you gone this instant!”

The stiff-backed official bore down on him fiercely. Even the giant blinked, as though he hadn’t expected to find an official here.

That’s right — murim warrior or not, taking on an official has to be awkward for him.

Thinking I’d send that customer something on the house, I helped the boss up.

“Pops, are you all right?”
“Nngh….”

The official showed no sign of fear at all. He advanced on the murim warrior and raised his voice.

“I’ll bring the government troops down on you this very—”
“Noisy.”

— WHUMP!

The murim warrior swung his fist, and the official’s head burst like a watermelon, its contents scattering in every direction.

“…Huh?”