WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: DereKimchi
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Returned Zenith Wants to Rest ◈
Episode 14:
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Yoon Seoha and Baek Dohee arrived at Yoo Kangmin's kendo dojo early in the morning.
There were still thirty minutes until their appointment, so Yoo Kangmin, who had been sweeping the dojo floor, looked over at them.
“You’re here already?”
“I woke up early.”
Yoon Seoha answered with a smile.
Ever since being rated D-rank yesterday, she had been unable to calm her excitement. She had checked her registration card before bed, then checked it again after getting up that morning.
After that, she simply could not stay home and wait.
“I met the branch chief on the stairs.”
“I left a little early as well.”
Baek Dohee readjusted her grip on her cane.
She wore a black tracksuit instead of her usual black suit.
Yoo Kangmin examined her leg. Her right knee was trembling faintly, perhaps from pushing herself too hard climbing the stairs.
“There are a lot of stairs, right? It’s an old building, so there’s no elevator.”
“This is manageable.”
The way she was catching her breath suggested otherwise.
“Sit down and rest for now. It’s not time to start yet.”
“Thank you.”
Yoon Seoha went inside first and brought over a cushion propped against the wall.
Only after sitting on it did Baek Dohee let out a quiet breath.
“By the way, what about your work today?”
“I handled the urgent matters in advance. I left the rest to the deputy branch chief.”
“This could take a while.”
“I cleared my entire day.”
There was no hesitation in her answer.
Yoo Kangmin gave a faint chuckle.
“You came prepared.”
“I told you yesterday. Treatment comes first right now. Here is the contract. Would you like to review it?”
Baek Dohee took documents from her bag.
It was the contract they had discussed.
“What’s there to review? You obviously handled it properly. Do I just sign here?”
Yoo Kangmin signed it and handed it back.
Only then did some of the tension leave Baek Dohee’s shoulders.
She had checked her phone several times the night before.
What if she received a message saying treatment would be difficult?
What if he reconsidered her condition and said he was not confident?
Those worries had kept her from sleeping properly.
But Yoo Kangmin was the same as yesterday.
“Then let’s begin.”
He spoke as though he were simply about to do what naturally had to be done.
That alone reassured her a little.
“I’m ready too!”
Yoon Seoha quickly stepped up beside him.
Yoo Kangmin took a bamboo sword from the wall and held it out to her.
Yoon Seoha’s eyes went wide.
“I can hold a sword today?”
“If you don’t want to, start with the horse stance.”
“I do!”
As though afraid it might be taken away, she quickly accepted the bamboo sword.
Then she adjusted her grip on the handle over and over.
It was the sword she had wanted to hold so badly all week.
“A sword, a sword...”
She had held a sword during yesterday’s assessment, but that time had been far too short to properly reunite with it.
So the moment she could hold a sword again was utterly blissful to her.
“You like it that much?”
“Yes. I didn’t know I liked swords this much. It’s strange. I never realized when I held one every day, but when I couldn’t hold one, my hands started shaking.”
“I-is that so?”
Yoo Kangmin frowned slightly.
For some reason, her words brought an old acquaintance to mind.
‘The Sword Empress.’
She was the woman who wielded a sword better than anyone in the world, and loved swords more strangely than anyone else.
After losing to Yoo Kangmin, she claimed to have glimpsed the ultimate essence of the sword. She handed her Sword Pavilion over to her successor and began following Yoo Kangmin around.
Forced into traveling with her, Yoo Kangmin still remembered the day she acquired a new sword.
[What do you think?]
[Think what?]
[Isn’t it beautiful?]
At the time, the Sword Empress had drawn her sword and was holding it up to the sunlight.
She had already been doing so for half a shichen.
She smiled blissfully as she ran her fingertips along the blade.
At first, Yoo Kangmin thought it was understandable. She had obtained a precious famous sword, after all.
But later, he learned that was not the case.
The Sword Empress was the sort of woman who would stop in front of a roadside forge just to admire a cheap iron sword hanging outside.
[That one has a rather charming roughness to it.]
[You bought one yesterday too.]
[This is different from the one I bought yesterday.]
[They’re the same iron swords. What’s different?]
That was the first time the Sword Empress had looked at Yoo Kangmin like he was an insect.
As though he had said something no human being should ever say.
[Do all people look the same to you just because they all have two eyes and one nose?]
[...]
After that, Yoo Kangmin refrained from offering opinions about swords in front of her.
If he said the wrong thing, he would be stuck listening to her explain a single sword until dawn.
‘Surely not.’
Yoo Kangmin looked at Yoon Seoha.
She was examining the bamboo sword from every angle.
From the side.
From above.
She even touched the handle once more.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s pretty when I look closely.”
“So?”
“Yes. The grain runs all the way to the tip. It also feels nice in my hand when I hold it.”
Yoo Kangmin’s expression turned peculiar.
It was an old bamboo sword.
He had merely picked one from the several lying around in the corner of the dojo.
Yet that was her reaction.
“It’s the same as the one I was holding earlier.”
“They’re different!”
Her answer came immediately.
“The one Master held had a slightly thicker handle. Its weight was also more forward-balanced than this one.”
“...”
“This one fits my hand perfectly.”
Yoon Seoha smiled in satisfaction.
That smile felt strangely familiar.
‘It would have been enough if she only resembled her in talent. She didn’t need to resemble her in that too.’
He was already wondering if he should regret deciding to teach her the Sword Empress’s martial arts.
“Close your eyes while holding the sword.”
“Why do I need to close them?”
“You don’t have to. But it’ll be easier if you do.”
“Ah, okay.”
Yoon Seoha promptly closed her eyes.
Yoo Kangmin looked down at the bamboo sword in her hands.
‘This must be fate too.’
The sword art the Sword Empress had refined until the very end.
Thanks to her chattering beside him for decades, he knew not only its formulas, but even which passages she had stayed awake for three nights revising.
‘Back then, I wanted nothing more than to stop listening.’
He never thought the day would come when he could put it to use.
“Bright Mirror Sword Manual.”
Yoon Seoha’s eyelids twitched at the unfamiliar name.
“It is the sword art you will learn from today onward.”
“Bright Mirror... Sword Manual?”
“It means to make your heart clear as a mirror, so that it may fully reflect your own sword.”
“Who made it?”
“A woman who loved swords obsessively.”
A smile rose to Yoon Seoha’s lips.
“She must have been a good person.”
“You two would have gotten along well.”
Yoo Kangmin let out a brief sigh before continuing.
“Commit what I say from now on to heart. You do not need to understand the meaning. Just keep repeating it silently.”
“Ah, okay.”
“Let the heart be still as water; let intent precede the sword.”
“...”
Thump!
It was strange.
Though she did not understand the words, hearing them somehow made her mind and body peaceful.
‘Let the heart be still as water... let intent precede the sword...’
As she repeated the sounds in her mind, Yoo Kangmin’s voice seemed to drift far away. Yet all other sounds were completely cut off, leaving only his voice.
“Transform ten thousand times, never stray from one heart.”
She recited it again and again.
Then, just as she began to wonder what it meant...
“The heart is like still water, and intent precedes the sword. Though the sword may change a thousand, ten thousand times, its origin never leaves a single heart.”
“Intent precedes the sword...”
With her eyes still closed, Yoon Seoha became conscious of the bamboo sword.
The sensation against her palm became vivid.
The grain she had examined several times just moments ago.
The thickness of the handle and the gentle line leading to the sword’s tip.
In the darkness, a sword appeared clearly before her.
“What is the sword you are holding now? Is it a bamboo sword?”
“No.”
The object in Yoon Seoha’s hands was an ordinary bamboo sword, but at this moment, what she held was not a bamboo sword.
What she held in her mind was not a bamboo sword, but a sword.
And that sword was Yoon Seoha’s will.
“Then what is it?”
“My will.”
“...”
Why was that?
Yoon Seoha somehow felt that Yoo Kangmin was smiling.
“That’s right. Then, what do you wish to cut with your will?”
What did she wish to cut?
At that question, the faces of the party members who had looked at her like baggage suddenly came to mind.
[No one knows your abilities better than I do.]
[You probably just snatched the final blow from somewhere.]
That was not true.
She was D-rank now.
She was no longer as weak as before.
Yet the more she clung to those thoughts, the more violently her sword shook.
Yoon Seoha bit her lip.
She had to rid herself of stray thoughts and focus only on the sword.
“Don’t force them away.”
“What?”
“A bright mirror is not a mirror that reflects nothing. When things come, reflect them. When things leave, do not hold them.”
Reflect what comes.
Do not cling to what goes.
“If you are afraid, see that you are afraid. If you are angry, know that you are angry. How can you wield the sword as you wish when you do not even know what it carries?”
Only then did Yoon Seoha look at her sword again.
Yoo Kangmin was saying that she should not ignore the stray thoughts that had surfaced, but confront them directly.
‘Let’s face them.’
At the sword’s tip was fear that she might fail.
In the handle was anger toward the party members who had coldly cast her out.
Along the blade was an impatience to be acknowledged by those who had looked down on her.
Countless emotions lingered within the sword.
That was right.
A sword was her will, embracing all those emotions.
‘So that’s what it was.’
What would she wield her sword for?
What would she truly cut?
Yoon Seoha realized she stood at a crossroads.
‘I...’
Instead of forcibly restraining the wavering sword, she looked toward where she wanted to go.
Then she saw the convenience store from that day.
She saw the people behind her back as she trembled before the goblin.
How could she not have been afraid?
She was terrified.
She wanted to run.
Yet she had raised her sword.
‘I want to protect people.’
Yoon Seoha’s consciousness reached the tip of her sword.
The wavering sword gradually steadied.
“Where intent arrives, the sword follows. Body and intent become one.”
Intent that words could not convey was passed on in the form of an image.
Yoon Seoha moved the sword herself.
A line was drawn through the darkness.
Her own will filled the space where the skill had guided her until now.
‘Ah.’
The sword stopped.
Only then did Yoon Seoha realize that she had actually moved the bamboo sword.
When she opened her eyes, its tip had stopped just above the floor.
The sword was exactly where she had wanted it to stop.
“What on earth...”
And there was Baek Dohee, staring at Yoon Seoha in astonishment.
“Well done.”
And Yoo Kangmin, smiling as though he had known she would accomplish it.
“Did you see it?”
“Yes.”
Yoon Seoha nodded.
What could she call it?
It was as though it might be within reach, yet was not.
As though it might be visible, yet could not be seen.
As though it might be understood, yet could not be understood.
That mysterious principle, the Way (the Dao).
That line that had cut through the darkness clearly held something worthy of being called the Way.
“Can I try it once more?”
“As much as you want. You do not need to close your eyes anymore.”
“Yes!”
Yoon Seoha raised the bamboo sword again.
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Watching Yoon Seoha become engrossed in swinging the bamboo sword without anyone telling her to, Yoo Kangmin muttered inwardly.
‘She must have liked it.’
It was something he did not need to ask the Sword Empress about.
She would undoubtedly have started chattering about what she liked about that bamboo sword.
Now it was Baek Dohee’s turn.
Swish.
When he turned his head, he saw Baek Dohee staring in shock.
“W-wait a moment.”
“What is it?”
“W-what just happened? Th-that sword just now... What on earth was that?”
It was only natural.
Publicly, Yoon Seoha was a D-rank hunter.
She could not be compared to Baek Dohee, who was already A-rank and had her sights on S-rank.
Yet Yoon Seoha’s final stroke had carried such depth that distinctions of rank seemed meaningless.
“What else would it be? It’s the Sword Empress’s martial arts.”
“M-martial arts? Th-then, will I be learning that too?”
“No?”
Yoo Kangmin gave a faint chuckle and continued.
“What I will teach you is the Thunder Emperor’s martial arts.”
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