WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Oblivious

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◈ Murim in my Hometown ◈

Chapter 2: Returning Home

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The fire burned through the night and did not fully go out until after dawn.

Officials with wet cloth over their noses and mouths combed through the still-smoking ashes.

They did not spare a glance for the charred corpses. Everyone first picked up the silver that had been wagered. They also carefully gathered the swords and sabers the swordsmen had used, along with anything else that might fetch money.

Anxiously, I stared at where my lodging had been.

Thirty copper coins hidden in the wall by my bed. The moment the officials left, I planned to run over and retrieve them.

Silver and copper coins could still be used even if they melted in a fire and lost their shape. The officials knew that well. That was why they dug through the scene so relentlessly.

In the end, my thirty copper coins also fell into an official's hands. His face was hard to make out, but he was definitely one of the bastards who regularly took bribes from the owner.

Even that was not enough for them. The officials stripped the hinges and every small piece of metal from the lodging doors.

My entire fortune was stolen right before my eyes. I was furious enough to grind my teeth, but I could not demand my money back.

Rather than getting it back, I would surely be branded the arsonist. It was better to be alive and penniless than have my head hanging over the city gate.

I had unexpectedly become free again, but I was not happy in the slightest.

The place where I ate and slept was gone. I had no idea where I would find food or a blanket that very day.

It was the dead of winter. A terrible time to become a beggar.

Here and there in the back alleys of the entertainment district, I saw frozen corpses. One of them was naked. Beggars had stripped away even the clothes and shoes. They may have killed the person before stripping the body.

As I wandered without aim, clutching the kitchen knife I had taken from the kitchen, my only possession, I suddenly thought of home.

I was no longer the little boy who had gritted his teeth and fled the gambling den two years ago.

I was confident that I could beg, steal, or do whatever it took to survive, ask my way around, and find my hometown.

The problem came after that.

Even if I returned looking like a beggar, I would have no way to make a living. I had inherited no land, and I had no money to buy livestock.

Soso's family was not well-off either. Showing up in rags and relying on them would be shameless.

Since I had come out to the city anyway, I wanted to earn real money and return home in glory.

All I had was the kitchen knife I carried for protection. All I could do was cheat at tile gambling, though I was still clumsy at it, and read people's expressions.

No one would hire me for that.

If I so much as poked around another gambling den, my wrist would be cut off before I even got to play a hand.

Maybe it would be different if I were some rich young master dressed in silk with guards at his side, but poorly dressed children could not even get near a gambling den.

Even if I wanted to work as an inn attendant at a small inn, no one would take me without connections.

And I could not simply take up a blade and become a bandit.

To live as a bandit you needed a huge build or a terrifying face to intimidate people. Only then would they tremble too much to fight back and hand over their money.

At the time, I was only thirteen. I was not small for my age, but even I thought my face was plain.

If I blocked passersby with a kitchen knife, I would surely be made a laughingstock, or beaten senseless and handed over to the officials.

The bastard who sold me had been frail even among adults. I could kill him because I bore a blood-deep grudge. I had no such grudge against strangers I had never met.

I survived by sneaking into the kitchens of brothels and inns like a rat to steal food, until an unexpected opportunity came my way.

By chance, I joined a group of wandering martial artists. It was a small, shabby organization willing to take in even a kid like me.

They said I would get paid as long as I helped make up the numbers. Then the atmosphere turned ugly during a job, and blades came out.

My experience with killing and my ability to read expressions helped greatly in the fight I was dragged into.

I somehow survived, earned ten well-worn copper coins, and was told that the little brat had some real grit. After that, I kept living by the blade.

For trash like us with nothing and no education, the martial world was about the only place where we could earn a living without being looked down on.

Put differently, nine out of ten martial artists were men with nothing and no education.

Idiots who reached for a blade whenever things went wrong. Cowards who did not hesitate to ambush one person from behind as a group.

Swordsmen who drank themselves stupid, gambled, lived however they pleased, and turned to robbery without hesitation once their money ran out. Scum not worth their balls, who bragged about raping women as if it were a tale of martial prowess.

Morons who repaid kindness with hostility and strutted about proudly.

Sometimes even I found it strange that my head was still attached after living among such hopeless people that even the Buddha would have given up on them.

Was it because I had a talent for knife work, something people had recognized ever since I prepared vegetables and meat in the gambling den's kitchen?

No.

This was not a world easy enough for desperate, untrained swings of a blade to keep working forever.

There was skill in killing people, too. By luck, I learned a little of it.

A nameless blade technique I learned from a one-armed middle-aged man in the back alleys of Hangzhou, after buying him food and drink for two months.

Without it, I would have become crow food long ago.

It was an extremely practical blade technique made up of eighteen forms.

At first, I thought it might have been something the man developed through real combat back when he had been somebody.

It had no Internal Energy Method, but the more I trained in it, the more I felt it was no ordinary blade technique.

The connections and structure between the forms were solid. Even to my untrained eyes, I could sense something that deserved to be called martial principle.

It was like seeing only the foothills of Mount Tai yet knowing that a vast mountain range lay beyond them.

No matter how I looked at it, it seemed to be martial arts from a martial family or sect that had once been quite influential.

The middle-aged man taught me only the forms. Until the very end, he never revealed his name or sect. He did not even tell me the technique's name.

After that encounter, which could be called a fortunate chance, my life became as tough as a whale's tendon.

Still, I was no match for martial artists from famous orthodox sects, great factions, or the Five Great Families, who had trained to kill people as systematically as assassins since childhood.

Leaving aside such terrifying people, I made good use of the nameless blade technique against ordinary swordsmen.

Other than a brief stint as a freelance escort for a small escort agency, I spent my life wandering the Central Plains as a swordsman.

The thought of returning home came to me just after the last battle where I had been hired as a swordsman.

It was a filthy war between two factions fighting over profits.

When the swordsmen gathered by both sides poured into the streets, pedestrians fled and merchants hurriedly shut their doors.

Soon, the clash of weapons rang out. Severed limbs and corpses rolled across the dirt. Heart-rending screams, shouts, and curses rose with the dust for a long while before finally fading.

For ordinary people trying to live honest lives, it made no difference who won.

Even if both sides were wiped out, more bastard scum would drift in from somewhere else to collect protection money.

This time, too, I did not die. There were many martial artists in the world, but true masters who made their living as swordsmen were extremely rare.

Those skilled enough to be called masters had cleverly settled into positions with various factions and trading companies, where they built up comfortable bellies.

So despite my age, I was considered fairly skilled.

Covered in blood, I looked around. The survivors were collecting the weapons and silver from the dead.

Then I saw a dying wandering martial artist, gasping for breath. I raised my blade, intending to kill him and search his clothes.

The man stared blankly at the sky with unfocused eyes and murmured desperately.

He was not asking to be saved.

He said he wanted to go home.

He spoke of an unremarkable memory, of swimming in the river with friends, catching fish, and roasting them to eat, recalling it from afar like a paradise he had seen in a dream.

It gave me much to think about.

I suddenly came to my senses, thinking that if I kept living by the blade, I would end up like him.

If I was going to struggle through life only to be stabbed someday, fall to the ground longing for home, and become food for wild animals, would it not be better to go back once while I was still whole?

I turned around and headed home immediately. That was how impulsively I decided to return.

My steps toward home were not light.

I was no longer an innocent eleven-year-old boy. Soso must have changed a great deal, too.

When I was little and loudly declared that I would propose to Soso once I grew up, I did not even know what marriage was. It was enough to know that I could become her closest family and stay with her forever.

It was like a little daughter saying she would marry her father when she grew up.

By now, Soso had probably married someone. Perhaps she had sons and daughters and was living well. There would be no place for me by her side.

No. That did not matter.

The decisive reason I had hesitated to return home all this time was that I was a martial artist who had killed many people.

When I was young, I once saw a murderer.

Two farmers had argued over flooding their rice fields, come to blows, and a killing had happened by accident.

Everyone in the village watched with frightened eyes as the farmer was taken away by officials. When they passed in front of our house, Soso covered my eyes with her hand.

Her hand trembled terribly. So did her body against my back. It was the first time in my life that I had seen Soso shake like that.

I had killed dozens of people. My reasons for killing were the same as those of other martial artists.

Personal grudges. Accidental conflicts. Self-defense. I had also been hired for money many times.

Swordsmen, rapists, murderous bandits, thieves, wastrels, idle rich men, gamblers, ruffians, loafers, swindlers, idiots, drifters...

Most of the men who died by my hand were martial artists and villains.

They were the sort the world was better off without alive, but that did not change the fact that I had killed people.

I had suffered many injuries in countless bloody battles. Still, I somehow survived.

The wounds on my body healed into scars. My heart was left with scars that could not be erased.

From some point on, whenever I thought of home, blood seeped even into my dreams.

I pushed open the gate I missed so dearly, and Soso came out happily to greet me. I ran toward her and reached out to embrace her, only to flinch.

Bright red drops of blood fell from my blood-soaked hands. No matter how much I wiped them, they would not dry.

It was no use hiding my hands behind my back.

Soso stepped backward in terror at the foul stench of blood that clung to my body.

I always woke up around then. That must have been the climax of the nightmare.

Those nightmares surrounded my hometown like an intricate formation.

That was why, despite wandering the Central Plains from Sichuan to Zhejiang, I had never gone anywhere near home.

This time was different.

I diligently made my way toward home. I traveled along official roads, and whenever I had to take mountain paths, I crossed the mountains with other travelers or escort agencies.

Avoiding bandits, venomous snakes, and tigers, I safely reached my hometown after three months.

Jeong Daecheon. At twenty-one years old, I had returned home ten years after leaving it.

Footnotes:

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