Chapter 53
Just as I was feeling a strong sense of incongruity…
A colleague of the man, who had been clearing up the surroundings, approached us.
“What about the target?”
‘The target?’
“We lost her. She disguised a servant as herself and used him as bait. Damn it, just when we finally thought we’d caught her, we got played like this.”
“Heh heh. Just looking at how she threw her own servant to his death so she could save herself, she’s clearly no ordinary woman. Her temper is famous, after all.”
“Anyway, this has become a pain. That guy doesn’t seem to know anything either… Should we search the mountain again? She couldn’t have already gotten out, could she?”
“If she had, the guys waiting at the foot of the mountain would have contacted us. That means she’s still here…”
‘What?’
I quietly listened to their conversation, breaking out in a cold sweat.
Something was going terribly wrong.
No matter how I looked at it, they were suspicious. From the things they’d said… calling me ‘useless,’ referring to the ‘target,’ getting ‘played,’ and mentioning the people ‘waiting at the foot of the mountain’, there was no way they had good intentions toward me.
If anything, they seemed similar to them. The masked men who had tried to abduct me without killing me on the spot…
‘The masked men?’
I looked around again.
Come to think of it, there were strangely few masked men lying on the ground. Considering how much noise they’d made earlier, the scene was surprisingly sparse.
Had all the others fled? Were they not chasing those who had escaped?
More importantly, why had the masked men given up so easily?
They had withdrawn as though they’d known these men were coming, almost as if the whole thing had been an act…
‘No way…’
Without realizing it, I took a step backward. Even then, they were still talking among themselves in lowered voices.
“One… Xiao… can’t…”
“Then… except… kill… all…”
When I took another step backward…
Rustle.
At the sound of my foot stepping on leaves, they turned toward me.
A sinister voice rang out.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
I hurriedly moved my mouth.
“The thing is, I, I, I want you to take me with you too! You’re looking for the young lady, aren’t you? I want to help you warriors too…”
“What?”
“I, I was worried about the young lady, and I thought it would be better if you warriors were the ones to find her… And I’ve been trusted by the young lady before, so I thought she might come out if I called her…”
“……”
“Ah, ah! And I just remembered, but I think the young lady went west. Southwest? Northwest? Anyway, she went in the direction where the sun sets…”
I spoke as desperately as I could.
If my guess was correct, I absolutely couldn’t let them find the young lady. I had to interfere somehow and obstruct them. But perhaps because my voice was trembling so badly, they didn’t answer for a moment.
Instead, they merely glanced at me and exchanged meaningful looks among themselves.
Suddenly, the man stepped forward.
“You said the young lady went west?”
“Yes, yes. Really, I saw…”
“With your life on the line?”
‘My life?’
As I felt a chill, the man slowly began approaching me.
“Strange. Until just now, you said you had no idea where she’d gone. And suddenly you’ve remembered?”
“Well, that, that is…”
“And how can you be so certain? That the young lady will come out if you call her. She’s already used you as bait and abandoned you. Do you really think she’ll answer just because you call?”
“……”
“If you’re that confident, what are you willing to bet?”
I hurriedly backed away. But no matter how far I moved, the man strode closer.
As I frantically stepped backward, I suddenly felt my heel catch on a rock.
I instinctively turned around.
I was already standing at the edge of a cliff.
“Your wrist? Your forearm? One of your legs? One of your eyes? Or…”
The man paused.
“Your head?”
“My lord… no, Great Hero, please, just once…”
“Unfortunately.”
The man raised his hand.
“We were ordered to kill everyone except that woman.”
The moment my heart sank with a thud, I didn’t stop to think and immediately leapt forward.
As though he’d anticipated that I would do exactly that, the man’s palm came crashing down toward me. The wind whipped around me, and the force behind it was extraordinary. It seemed like he intended to kill me with a single palm strike.
Instead of trying to avoid his hand, I widened my eyes. Then I carefully watched the direction his hand was coming from, tilted my body to the left, and dodged it.
‘I dodged it!’
But I had miscalculated. At the same time, another palm was flying toward me from the direction I’d dodged into.
‘…Huh?’
Only then did I realize. The first palm strike had been a feint.
The real attack was coming from the left.
I immediately jumped backward. Before I knew it, I was floating in midair.
The man’s palm barely touched my chest. But my body was falling faster.
The sound of wind rushing past my ears filled the air, and everything that had happened until now flashed before my eyes.
Coming into this world and meeting Mother, entering the Xiao Family Manor and meeting all sorts of people, meeting the young lady, bickering with her until we’d opened our hearts to each other.
And finally, parting from her…
Only one thought came to mind at the very end.
‘I said I would definitely survive…’
I’d promised her.
I’d promised the young lady that I’d survive no matter what and return to her side…
I’m sorry, my lady.
My body rapidly plummeted.
I closed my eyes.
I think I shed a few tears.
***
I had a strange dream.
In the dream, a man and a woman were sitting side by side inside a cave.
Rain was falling steadily outside, while firewood quietly burned inside the cave. They stared blankly outside and talked.
“Do you regret it?”
“Regret? Do you think I’m even in a position to regret anything?”
“Everyone lives with regrets. It’s the same whether they’re evil or good.”
“……”
“What do you regret?”
“What do I…”
After a long while, the man’s hoarse voice could be heard.
“Everything.”
“……”
“I regret everything. From the very beginning until now.”
“……”
“Good and evil…”
Only then did I realize. The man had been crying for a long time.
“They were never things that could be divided so easily…”
***
“Gasp…!”
I opened my eyes.
Trembling as though my entire body were convulsing, I gasped for breath. Something I couldn’t tell was river water or tears trickled from the corners of my eyes.
I stared blankly into the air and thought,
‘What was I dreaming about?’
Strangely, I couldn’t remember.
No matter how hard I tried to recall it, my mind only became hazier. I couldn’t properly remember anything.
I only remembered that it had been a little sad.
I shook my head and cut off the thought. Instead, I looked around.
‘So where… am I?’
I was sprawled out in the lower reaches of a river.
Half of my lower body was submerged in the water, so it seemed I’d been swept away by the current for quite some time.
Then I suddenly remembered what had happened earlier.
Exchanging clothes with the young lady and running away. Being driven to the cliff by the masked men, and someone coming to my aid at the moment of crisis. And then discovering that they were enemies too.
In the end, I’d been struck by the man’s palm and fallen off the cliff.
I thought I’d surely died like that, but…
‘I survived?’
I was inwardly astonished as I felt around my chest.
It seemed that when the man launched his palm strike, I fell off the cliff and wasn’t hit by it head-on, which was why I had survived.
Of course, surviving after falling off a cliff was another matter entirely.
There was no other way to explain it except that heaven had helped me.
‘…My body isn’t completely fine, though.’
I hadn’t avoided the attack entirely, after all, so I clutched my throbbing chest.
Then I suddenly froze.
“……?”
Somehow, my chest felt empty.
At the thought that immediately came to mind, I hurriedly reached inside my clothes and searched around. But there was nothing to be found.
No…
There was something.
Several fragments of a completely shattered hairpin.
“The hairpin…”
I let out a groan.
Yes, I should have expected it from the moment the man attacked my chest.
I’d kept the hairpin there. Of course it would have broken like this.
But I couldn’t help feeling upset. This was the young lady’s mother’s final keepsake, after all.
It was something precious to the young lady, and even so, she’d lent it to me. I’d vowed that I would definitely return it to her.
‘I couldn’t keep my promise…’
Naturally, resentment welled up inside me. Toward the man who had struck my chest.
If only I’d realized sooner that the man was suspicious, back at the Xiao Family Manor… could I have realized it?
Honestly, I was doubtful.
Neither I nor the Chief Steward nor the Manor Lord had suspected that those men harbored ulterior motives.
The Manor Lord hadn’t simply accepted just anyone as an escort, either. He’d hired them after receiving recommendations from someone he could properly trust.
And that trustworthy person was…
‘Namgung Jeong.’
The Manor Lord’s sworn younger brother.
My temporary master and the young lady’s uncle.
The Thunder Sword Hero, whose reputation resounded throughout the martial world.
‘Did he really not know?’
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