"Uncle?"
The little boy looked up at me and blinked. His eyes, so much like his mother's, were bright and full of curiosity. The distance between us felt as vast as the height from which I looked down at him.
Suddenly, a strange realization washed over me. I've grown this much, too...
"Yes, he's your uncle. Uncle Dae-cheon. You should greet him."
At Sister Soso's urging, the boy bowed properly at the waist.
"Hello. I'm Kwon Ju-gyeong."
My nephew...
The situation was so sudden I felt dazed, but it wasn't a bad feeling. No, it was good. So good that a smile naturally formed on my lips.
My hometown was gone, but I felt as if I had finally found my place.
"It's nice to meet you. I am Jeong Dae-cheon."
I patted the boy's head once, then reached into my robes. It was the first time I'd ever met my nephew; I wanted to give him something. Of all the things I had, there was only one that a child might like.
I took out five coins from my pouch. I wanted to give him silver taels, but carrying that much money could be dangerous for him.
"Buy yourself some sweets."
"Wow, money!"
"Say thank you."
"Thank you! Uncle! Mom, can I go to the market?"
"You can't go out alone later."
Sister Soso chuckled as she sent her son, who was jumping up and down with excitement, outside.
"Didn't you give him too much spending money? You'll spoil him."
"It's only five coins."
"Hmm. You must be earning a lot."
"Just enough to get by. What about my brother-in-law? Was he among the disciples who came with you earlier?"
At this point, I felt like nothing could surprise me anymore. I was ready to meet him, but Sister Soso shook her head with a bitter expression.
"He's dead. Four years ago."
Suddenly, I remembered what Geuk-hwan had told me.
"The previous sect leader also passed away, didn't he?"
"Hm? Oh. You heard. Four years ago. He was ambushed by an assassin."
"My husband was the head instructor of the Western Shadow Sword Sect."
"He was protecting the sect leader and met his end at the same time."
My gaze fell to the sword hanging at my sister's waist.
"Is that when you started wielding a sword?"
Sister Soso bit her lip and nodded.
"I used to not understand why martial artists were so obsessed with revenge. Now that it's happened to me, I get it."
"I felt as if my rage would never cool unless I could catch them, slit their bellies open, and chew on their livers. I just couldn't stay still."
"Aunt and Uncle, too..."
Sister Soso's voice grew heavy. She wore the deeply contemplative expression of a martial artist, something I had never seen on her before.
"A year after that, thieves broke in. When the sword school began to falter, bastards who saw us as an easy target started rearing their heads one by one."
"Mom and Dad were caught up in it and met a terrible fate. But we caught all those bastards and got our revenge. The sword school was still standing strong back then."
When we lived in the Western Village, we rarely had thieves at night. The village was poor to begin with and it was a remote place surrounded by mountains. The fences were low, and the doors were rarely locked tight.
The two of them had lived their whole lives that way in our hometown without trouble, yet here, in a sword school protected by high walls and strong martial artists, they met their end. The fact that getting closer to the martial world meant more bloodshed stabbed painfully at my heart once more.
"The assassin who killed my husband and the previous sect leader is still out there, but we'll find him soon. The sect leader is still looking into it... I'll go report. You can rest here."
Although I hadn't been officially accepted as a guest by the sect leader, Sister Soso led us to the guest quarters. The guest quarters were built in the style of a detached house. Inside the spacious room, there were only a few old tables and chairs.
Clear marks on the floor showed where furniture once stood. The walls, too, bore traces of removed scrolls. It seemed they had sold everything off due to their dire financial situation.
Because of that, it felt not so much simple as desolate. The rear garden was also a mess from lack of care. The landscaping stones were broken, and weeds sprouted everywhere.
Thick vines covered one side of the wall like a spider's web. As I stood lost in thought before the decaying garden, a forgotten memory, Tang Hye-seo quietly came up beside me.
"Are you feeling a little better now?"
"I'm fine."
"You didn't expect her to have a child, did you?"
"I had anticipated it."
It wasn't a lie. It would have been stranger if she didn't have a child after being married for so long. Even before returning home, I had imagined Sister Soso married to someone, living well with a son and daughter.
"Hmm. For someone who anticipated it, you looked awfully surprised."
I shook my head with a bitter smile.
"No matter how much you understand something in your head, isn't it different when you face it in reality?"
It was true for everything. Accepting, preparing, and steeling oneself didn't lessen the shock. If anything, the time spent agonizing over it only left one more stunned by the unexpected outcome.
The memories were shattered, and all that remained was an awkward reality. But Sister Soso was living steadfastly, raising her son on her own. Leaving behind memories of joy and sorrow, she was in the midst of a cold reality.
I finally understood my feelings for Sister Soso with certainty. She was family to me. Like a blood-related sister.
No matter how she changed, that fact would never change. Not in the past, not now, and not in the future... Listening, Tang Hye-seo gave me a playful nudge in the ribs with a mischievous smile.
"Surely you weren't planning on marrying her when you grew up, right?"
Seeing my sheepish expression, Tang Hye-seo's eyes widened in surprise.
"Huh? Really?"
"That was when I was ten and didn't even know what affection between a man and a woman was."
"I just wanted to become family and keep living in the same house. It's similar to how little girls say they'll marry their fathers when they grow up."
"I never did that."
I stared intently at Tang Hye-seo's suddenly serious face.
"For you, Young Lady Tang... I feel like you really wouldn't have."
I meant it as a joke. Tang Hye-seo must have known, but her expression hardened, as if I had accidentally touched an unhealed wound. The atmosphere instantly became awkward.
As I watched Tang Hye-seo's back as she turned away in silence, I suddenly realized something. I knew very little about her. A fearsome woman from the direct lineage of the Tang Clan who used poison and hidden weapons.
She was strangely friendly to me, but at the scene where we were to capture a Tang Clan traitor, she had tried to kill Dong Ho-sak without hesitation to silence him. And what else was there? I vaguely recalled the various things we had done while moving together.
We had shared jerky and wandered through the black market together. The day would come when even those moments would be looked back on as fond memories. No matter how our connection continued or diverged.
As I was lost in thought, I looked up to see the sunset spreading across the sky. One world had met its distant end, but in reality, only a single day was coming to a close. Without avoiding the descending twilight, I stood alone in the frigid night wind and sank into the darkness.
About an hour later, Sister Soso returned.
"The sect leader will see you."
The sect leader of the Western Shadow Sword Sect, Baek Cha-hyeon, was a dignified middle-aged man who looked to be in his late forties. His gaze was steady, and his aura was well-refined. For a wastrel who had ruined his sect with drinking and womanizing, he looked far too composed.
If not for the strong smell of liquor wafting from him, he would have seemed a perfectly respectable head of a proper sect. We briefly introduced ourselves and sat around a table, sharing tea.
"You are a great monk from Shaolin, I see? And you are from the Tang Clan?"
They were guests from the renowned Shaolin and Tang Clan. Any other sect would have tried their best to form a good relationship, but Baek Cha-hyeon was indifferent. He was just as cold when dealing with me.
"Soso's younger brother from her hometown... Are you here to take your sister back home?"
"Why would you think that?"
Baek Cha-hyeon's eyes narrowed.
"Didn't you come because you received word? That's how they all left, one by one. I am not blaming you. The Western Shadow Sword Sect is finished."
"We will take down our sign after this winter. It has been years since I told everyone to find their own way, yet those who remain are foolish."
After downing the rest of his tea, Baek Cha-hyeon stood up from his seat.
"It is a humble abode, but you may stay as long as you wish."
As we walked out toward the guest quarters, Tang Hye-seo whispered discreetly.
"That sect leader seems like a rather twisted person."
"I'm sure he has his reasons for being twisted."
It was what I thought when I heard about the Western Shadow Sword Sect from Geuk-hwan, but meeting him in person confirmed it. Baek Cha-hyeon was not a born libertine. It didn't seem like drinking and womanizing suited his constitution.
If not for his father's sudden death, he probably would not have become like this. Tang Hye-seo tilted her head, stroking her chin.
"About the smell of liquor coming from the sect leader. I caught a faint scent of grass, didn't you?"
"I don't know. He might have been drinking medicinal wine."
Each brewery had its own recipe for medicinal wine, where medicinal herbs or plants were added to white liquor to give it flavor and aroma. Some smelled of grass, others of medicine. Tang Hye-seo surely knew this, yet she wore a dubious expression.
Gwang-hyo, seemingly not wanting to get involved in the sword school's affairs, remained silent the entire time. Early the next morning, I headed to a nearby hill with Sister Soso. The sky was clear and the sunlight was transparent, but the snow that had fallen on the mountain had not yet melted.
With every step on the mountain path, the piled snow crumbled fleetingly under my feet. My feet, clad in leather shoes, were bitterly cold. In the frozen earth, my uncle and aunt were asleep.
The sect leader must have paid some mind, as the gravestones were properly carved from stone. I stood side by side with my sister before the names of the two carved on the gravestones.
"Mom, Dad, Dae-cheon is here. You remember the bedwetter Dae-cheon, right?"
"You said he was so good at drawing maps on the blankets that he could become an artist when he grew up..."
"Don't make things up."
"It's true that I wet the bed, isn't it?"
"You didn't do it that much."
My sister's blatant lies, spoken so calmly, were so bewildering that I found myself retorting, and an involuntary chuckle escaped me. My sister smirked, too. It seemed the atmosphere had become too dark and solemn, and she wanted to lighten it up a bit.
Looking back, my sister was like this when we were young, too. After I lost my parents, when I refused to eat and was lost in despair, she did all sorts of things to try and make me laugh.
Many times, when I came home after being beaten up, she would rush out like a fury and beat up the neighborhood kids. At times like that, she was less a sister and more a brother. I took out liquor from my bundle, offered it to the two of them, and performed a deep bow.
My sister watched silently from the side. In the desolate mountains where there was no shelter from the wind, those who had passed on and those who clung only to their memories met in such silence. Drawn by the sound of the whistling wind, I turned my head.
Somewhere in the bleak winter landscape, an uprooted, withered yellow tree lying on its side caught my eye. For the past ten years since leaving my hometown, I had lived just like that. I became a wandering swordsman, drifting aimlessly, struggling desperately.
I did my best to survive, but in truth, it was a time when I was yellowing and withering away, like a piece of driftwood. What did I swing my blade for, and what did I hope to gain by killing people? My chest felt hollow, as if a hole had been punched through it.
If only I could see the two of them again, the bitter days I had endured by gritting my teeth would not have felt so empty. If I could just embrace my aunt and uncle and have a good, long cry, I felt I could die right then without any regrets.
The fact that I could never see them again cut into my heart more painfully than the midwinter wind.
"Dae-cheon, come here."
When I turned around, Sister Soso was waiting for me with her arms open. Her eyes were as red as mine. Wiping my eyes, I slowly walked over.
At the end of a walk that felt as slow and heavy as the ten years that had passed, I embraced my sister again, just like when I had lost my parents and become an orphan. My sister's embrace was smaller than I remembered, but it was still just as warm. It no longer smelled of blood.
It must have been the same for my sister, holding me in an embrace that was larger than she remembered. No matter where we had been, what we had done, or how we had lived, we were family.
"Welcome back."
My sister whispered in a tearful voice, gently patting my back. I wanted to say that it was good to be back, but only my low sobs, mingling with the wind, lingered long like the ringing in my ears. A long while later, we came down from the mountain.
Tang Hye-seo and Gwang-hyo, who had finished their preparations to leave for Mount Zhongnan, were waiting for me in front of the carriage.