by J D Astra
Woong-ji spoke over Shin-soo’s manic shouting. “Ry challenge complete, points to Jiyong.”
The crowd—whose presence I’d completely forgotten about—clapped wildly. Shin-soo pulled his hands away from his reddened face and glared with burning fury. Suddenly I realized that I might not just be antagonizing a bully but getting myself in deep trouble with a powerful family.
I didn’t know who Shin-soo was, but he wasn’t no one if he lived in the kingdom. I’d come to Bastion to learn, yes, but also to make connections. To secure a place for my family to live, a job that would pay well enough for my mother to see a doctor.
Woong-ji clapped once. “Second challenge. Zo—”
“I’m going to destroy you.” Shin-soo growled the words from the pit of his stomach as he advanced on me.
“Do not interrupt your instructor!” Pung-sah snapped, and Shin-soo shrunk back an inch.
“Second challenge,” Woong-ji started again. “Zo, feat of endurance. Horse stance.”
Oh no. My stomach rumbled and some side of me wanted to lose so I could eat. The scents of food from the dining hall wafted through the air, and many of the starving first-year students peeled off from the duel circle to eat. I wanted to join them.
But I wanted to make it to my second year more.
I swallowed and began cycling breaths, creating more zo.
“Begin,” Pung-sah declared, and I dropped into horse stance. My muscles screamed in agony, my kneecaps bounced uncontrollably, and everything in my being said drop to the ground.
I took a shallow breath and allowed some of the stored zo to soothe the burn in my muscles. It wasn’t enough. Weakness was already overtaking me. I closed my eyes and sucked down another deep breath and remembered what I’d told Cho. I straightened my back and leaned into my heels, then brought my fists tight against my sides.
“Your legs are trembling,” Shin-soo taunted.
I gathered spit in my mouth and swallowed, then focused back on cycling zo through my body. I was grateful it wasn’t a sparring duel, but horse stance? It could’ve been anything other than that. My muscles burned, and I begged for relief. I knew if I fell, I still had the ma competition, and I would beat him. There was no way I wouldn’t beat him...
But winning at all three was more points, and that would guarantee my ability to go on to a second year. I kept my mind focused on my goal—getting to a second year—and tried to push everything else away.
Shin-soo’s labored breathing in front of me was the driving force that kept my legs from buckling. I could hold on. I could beat him. The seconds inched by like millennia, but I listened to Shin-soo’s struggling. He would drop before me. He would fall. Just fall damn it!
Shin-soo roared through gritted teeth, and I squeezed my eyes shut tighter. He sucked down a pained breath, then another, and I heard someone in the crowd cheer him on.
My zo was nearly depleted, and the burning consumed my thoughts. I tried to suck in the energy around me, but it slipped through my grasp when I tried to hold it in. I pursed my lips and furrowed my brow as sweat slipped down my forehead.
“No!” Shin-soo shouted. “You’re not stronger than me!”
Maybe not, but I had far more to lose, and I wasn’t going to start losing ground on the first day of school. Shin-soo chanted over and over that I wasn’t as strong. I threw each chant on the fire of determination that burned in my stomach.
“Damn ganhan, you think you’re strong? You’re not. You’re nothing!” There was a desperation in his voice that gave me hope. My body begged for me to quit, but that wasn’t an option. We were close now. He would fall before me.
“Come on, Jiyong,” Cho’s voice said from somewhere in the crowd, and I grounded myself. Straight back, tight fists, weight in my heels. Breathe. Just breathe.
Then the sweet sound came to my ears. Shin-soo hit the ground. I opened my eyes to be sure before allowing myself to crumble, and there he was on his ass, dark hair dripping sweat and pain in his eyes. Not just the pain of his body, but that of the embarrassment I had caused him.
I dropped to my knees and let my hands fall to the sides. The crowd cheered, and some groaned with anger, and slaps on the back came my way with words of amazement.
Woong-ji boomed over the rowdy group, “Zo challenge complete. Points to Jiyong. Shin-soo, you may secede from the duel at this point. You may still win ma against Jiyong, but you cannot win the duel. As it stands, Jiyong has two points and Shin-soo, zero points.”
Shin-soo looked somewhere between tears and a bloodthirsty rage, but I didn’t avert my gaze.
“I’m ready,” I said, my voice even. Shin-soo knew I wouldn’t have picked ma if it wasn’t my strength, and perhaps I shouldn’t have shown my hand like that, but it made him think twice about gifting me a third point.
He scoffed, and the anger in his face smoothed over. I knew deep down his blood was boiling as he stood on shaky legs. “Not worth my time.” He looked to his cronies and slapped the back of the guy who had made weird hand-to-eye gestures then pointed at me in physical training. “Come on, Tae-do, let’s get some grub.” Tae-do leered at me and shrugged Shin-soo’s hand off his shoulder, then turned away for the dining hall with the others.
The crowd groaned and dispersed, leaving me kneeling in the hall.
Cho rushed me, shaking my shoulders with a laugh. “You won your first duel!”
“Food,” I said, unable to feel joy about the victory, or think of anything else, until my stomach was full.
Hana walked past us with an amused smile. “Nice work, Jiyo-yagja.”
The word conjunction was unfamiliar to me—something akin to little fierce—and while it didn’t sound like an insult, it had connotations I didn’t want to adopt. I wasn’t here to earn strange nicknames or make waves, but it seemed a tsunami was on the horizon.
Chapter 12
LUNCH WAS HALF THROUGH when we sat down with our bowls, and before I’d gotten even one bite in, an unfamiliar girl plopped down next to me and set her food on the table. She had chin-length black hair that bounced when she moved and round, dark eyes that looked innocent, but seemed to hide a sharp keenness.
“You’re Jiyong,” she said with her hand out. I took it, and she grinned impishly. “I’m Yuri. I saw your duel. You really don’t quit. I think you’re clever, and possibly a decent person.”
How blunt. “Thanks, Yuri.”
“I see the look on your face. My parents say I’m too forward and need to learn the art of beating around the bush. But beating a bush doesn’t get you anywhere.” She took a sip of her soup.
“It’s a quick way to anger a badgermouse.”
Yuri barked a laugh. “You’re funny, too. We’re going to be friends,” she declared and returned to her soup.
“Okay then.” I shrugged before shoveling the first bite of rice into my mouth. It melted on my tongue like the sweetest thing I’d ever tasted. I wanted to devour the whole bowl that instant, but I restrained myself and preserved my manners, especially in front of a new... friend? I supposed I could use more of those. I did come to make some connections after all, and Yuri seemed decent enough.
Cho cleared his throat and extended his hand. “I’m Cho-bin, but friends call me Cho.”
Yuri looked up from her food for a second and nodded. “Hey.”
Cho scowled, then looked to me. I shrugged and shook my head. I didn’t have time to play diplomat. I needed to cram as much food in me as possible before the next class, En Manipulation I. My en wasn’t horrible like my li, but I knew I was going to need everything Bastion had to offer to survive.
With fifteen minutes left in the lunch hour, I ran to scrounge up seconds, filling my bowl with a pathetic hodgepodge of anything that remained. I downed it twice as fast as firsts and ran to the washing station to take care of my dish. Yuri followed me, as did Cho, who looked perturbed. Yuri was either oblivious to Cho’s sideways glances or didn’t care. Either way, she was an interesting character.
>
Yuri asked, “What’s next?” enthusiastically, as she rocked back on her heels, and I noticed just how short she was. The top of her head barely made it up to my chin.
My brow furrowed. “Class.”
She laughed again. “No kidding, which?”
“I have Core Foundations now,” Cho said as he stepped up beside me.
I checked my schedule to be sure. “En Manipulation.”
Yuri grinned. “Me too!”
“Great,” Cho mumbled.
This was not how I wanted things to go. I had to put a stop to Cho’s strange behavior before it turned to infighting. “I’ll walk with you to your class,” I offered Cho, and he nodded.
Yuri accompanied us quietly while Cho discussed what we had coming for us in En Manipulation I since he’d had that class before lunch. “Moving water. That’s all you’re going to do the whole class... just one bucket to another, over, and over, and over.”
“Sounds simple enough,” I said with a shrug.
Yuri blew a raspberry but said nothing.
“Trust me, it’s simple, but hard. After your fiftieth bucket swap, you’re going to be tired.” He rubbed his temples. “Anyway, what about Core Foundations?”
I thought back to Woong-ji’s class. So much had happened already, it was a challenge to pick out the exact order in which we went through class. “Almost everyone was late, so we had a shorter class this time. It starts with a cleanse, something I’d never done... Then she discusses core design and requirements to graduate to second year.”
“I suck at core design.” Cho sighed and hunched forward with dismay.
We stopped at Woong-ji’s door, and I gave him a pat on the shoulder. “You’ve got it. We can practice tonight.”
“If I make it to tonight,” he said with a grimace.
I chuckled. “You’ll make it. See you later for dinner.”
He nodded and stepped into the classroom. Yuri and I walked quietly, which made it impossible not to notice people whispering, staring, and sometimes outright pointing. I looked down at Yuri who was striding along without a care in the world.
She was blunt, so perhaps I could be, too. “I don’t mean to be rude, but are you someone important?”
A bemused smile played on her face. “What do you mean?”
My brow scrunched together. “Well, people are whispering and pointing at us.”
“They’re probably pointing at you. You did beat Shin-soo, a very wealthy and important do-nothing brat from my Primary school, Champion’s Garden.”
With that one statement, Yuri’s motivations were clear. Shin-soo was an enemy of hers, and now one of mine, too. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
“What makes him important?” I asked as I pulled up the map and scouted our route.
Yuri shrugged. “His family owns the mines up north. Lots of money and power, completely corrupt and useless.”
“I see.” This sparked an idea. Yuri seemed to know Shin-soo, at least a bit, and Hana also seemed to know him. “Yuri, do you know anything about Hana Jun?”
She hummed. “Yeah, I know her. Well, I know about her. We didn’t talk. She was above me or something. Her family owns the largest entertainment business in Busa-nan. More wealthy do-nothings. Except the somethings they do are abducting pretty girls from outer-cities and making them work in their clubs. Those are rumors, of course, but they’re true.”
I’d never heard of abductions, only recruitment. Perhaps Namnak was too far out of the circuit for that news to travel. Nonetheless, the notion turned my stomach. I thought of Cho’s sister. He’d said she was already in the kingdom as a dancer. I wondered if Hana’s family had anything to do with it. I hoped the rumors weren’t true, but my gut told me it was ignorant to hope.
We arrived at our class, and it proceeded exactly as Cho had described it. We moved water from one bucket to another.
Over. And over.
And over.
Not by hand, of course, that would be easy. I started the exercise much too fast, moving the water back and forth at a breakneck pace as if the more bucket swaps I did, the higher my class score might be. Several splashes against my dobok later, I learned to slow down. I could move the water in a two-centimeter diameter stream continuously while creating en munje at the same time.
This taxed my system even greater than before, and by the end of it I felt like I needed another cleanse. Somehow, the first conscious cleanse had made me aware of the used munje lying around in my system. How was it possible that I’d never noticed it before? How much ma munje had been gunking up my body from bot fights?
It wasn’t a help that through the entire class I felt eyes on the back of my head. Yuri let me know that Shin-soo was staring daggers at me, hardly moving his water, which prompted encouragement from the instructor, Pung-sah.
The last class of the day was Munje Recycling I, which I was excited for. The instructor was Woong-ji again, and I shared with Yuri, Cho, and Hana. I was grateful to see Shin-soo absent from this class and valued every second I could get away from his burning hatred.
When we’d all taken our seats, Woong-ji walked slowly from one end of the classroom to the other. “I’m going to tell you a secret,” she said, and I heard the whole class shifting on their pillows, sitting up straighter. Even I inclined forward at this, eager to know whatever secret Woong-ji had to share.
“Ma munje is the least utilized, the least understood, and yet the most powerful. En can put out fires, create lightning, clean water, move stone, but still, it pales in ma’s strength. Li will teach you about our world, the plants and animals that live in it, show you how to change yourself and your environment to your advantage, but it is nothing compared to the basic, fundamental power of ma. Zo will strengthen your body, heal it, harden your skin like armor, and more, but it’s still nothing compared to ma. Ry can draw any eye, hide every lie, and turn minds in your favor, yet... it is not as powerful as ma.
“Why am I saying this?” Woong-ji stopped her pacing and turned to the class.
No one moved, but I think I understood what she was getting at. I raised my hand, and Woong-ji smiled, then nodded at me.
“Machina’s uses are vast and still widely unknown, but what we do use runs our everyday lives. The trains that allow Busa-nan’s kingdom to grow, the arborum machina that cut down the trees and process them into useable wood, the irrigation machina that water the crops that feed us. Without ma, our civilization could not exist as it does.”
Woong-ji grinned. “This is good, and this is all true. But there is something even deeper. Anyone?”
No one spoke or raised a hand. Woong-ji nodded her head absently and resumed her pacing. “What guards our munje crystals? Don’t be shy.”
“Our core,” I said at her invitation, and she bobbed her head harder.
“Yes. What is the core made of?”
“No one really knows,” Yuri said with a shrug.
“Ah, but we do know,” Woong-ji said as she waggled her finger. “We know because empirical evidence tells us so.”
Another student spoke up. “You’re talking about Machina Core Theory? But it completely contradicts everything we know, Mun-Jayu itself.”
“But it doesn’t!” Woong-ji said as she turned, pointing her bony finger at the speaker. “This knowledge is not secret, despite what I said. This is something that we at the Historian’s Guild try to share with all people of Busa-nan. Unfortunately, our messages are not always approved by the censor, but here, at Bastion, we can teach all kinds of theory.
“My other class, Core Foundations, will go hand in hand with Munje Recycling. When you recognize that your core is simply a construct of machina around your crystal, the door to Mun-Jayu will open to you.”
Hana raised her hand. “But Machina Core Theory states that munje is not part of us, that it comes from machina, and Mun-Jayu says it is a gift from our ancestors, and the gods.”
Woong-ji quirked a white-streaked eyebrow. “And who sa
ys that machina is not that gift? We learn more about our ancestors every day, and more evidence is pointing to Machina Core Theory being true. There are still many unknowns. What is the crystal? How much is it involved in the creation of munje, the control of it? How can it be grown?”
I hadn’t known much about Machina Core Theory, as it wasn’t taught in outer-city, but if a crystal could be grown? This information could change Minjee’s life.
Woong-ji sighed. “I digress. We’re here to learn about recycling munje. So, let us begin.”
I hung on every word as Woong-ji described the process of recycling not just used ma, but all munje. Unlike in the first exercise where she had us cleanse our systems, expelling the used munje through our breath, instead we were holding it in. With fresh ma munje, we could collect the used magic from our bodies through the lungs and pull it back into the core to extract additional resources.
There was nearly zero waste when the method was done successfully, and the recycled energy was primed to be transmuted into more ma to help build up the core and its bands. Though I failed to convert any of my used en munje properly in the first class—which left my lungs aching—I trusted Woong-ji and Bastion to know that it was possible. Why would there be a whole class on it if it wasn’t possible?
We went to dinner all abuzz, excited about new possibilities. Still, some students seemed too offended by the idea of Machina Core Theory to accept Woong-ji’s teachings. Their loss. I would put aside Mun-Jayu’s contradictory laws if it meant figuring out a way to help Minjee, or even my mother.
The first day of school proved to be everything I had hoped, and some bits I wanted to avoid, but all the same, I was exactly where I was supposed to be, and nothing was going to stop me.
Chapter 13
PAIN UNLIKE ANYTHING I’d ever felt in my fifteen years throbbed through my body the next day, and so I was grateful that the morning’s class was Zo Utilization I. After a difficult breakfast—difficult because raising my hand to my mouth was excruciating—the zo utilization class was exactly what I needed.
