by J D Astra
I turned my attention back to the duel. Hana took an offensive stance, but her deadly gaze wasn’t locked on Shin-soo. She was looking over his shoulder at Tae-do. They were both going to get themselves expelled.
“The zo challenge is a spar,” Sung-ki said, unsurprised as he scrolled through the list of activities on the disc in his hand.
Shin-soo dropped into a defensive stance, and I moved to stand near Tae-do. I wasn’t going to let her destroy her future here over whatever Shin-soo had said.
Tae-do looked down at me with a snort and a superior snarl. “Ready to see your girlfriend bloodied?”
“Hardly,” I said as I infused my muscles with a thick layer of zo. I only hoped I’d be fast enough to stop her from whatever she was planning.
Ko-nah leaned in behind me and nudged my elbow. “Think she’ll win?” he asked, his voice sounding more amused than anxious.
One of Tae-do’s goons chuckled. “By the grace of Jigu.”
I shook my head at the equivalent of “fat chance.” She wasn’t about to destroy Shin-soo. She was coming for Tae-do’s entitled ass. I had half a mind to let her bury her fists in his gut, but I couldn’t let her get expelled.
“Begin!” the red-robed instructor declared, and Hana leapt over Shin-soo, her focus pinned on Tae-do. I stepped in front of the undeserving bully, prepared to stop her.
Shin-soo turned, hooking her foot with his and pulling her attention back to their fight. She kicked his foot away and deflected another sweep attempt. He reached for the collar of her dobok, and she snatched his wrists. Hana turned her hands, rotating Shin-soo’s arms into unnatural twists. He groaned and dropped to a knee.
Hana spun on her toes, ready to return to the assault on Tae-do. I lifted my guard, but again, Shin-soo intervened.
He grabbed her back leg, holding her ankle tightly. “Don’t do it,” he warned, the same fear in his voice as when he confronted me in the garden.
“Let me go!” she growled the words. She spun, kneeing him in the side of the head before shoving him back.
But he didn’t let go. She slammed her fist down toward his face, but he caught the punch in the palm of his hand.
“Don’t,” he said again with terrified gravity.
In one fluid movement, he flipped her foot and pulled her down to the ground. He held her wrists tightly, trying to pin her down with his superior weight.
“I’ll crush him!” she shrilled as she kicked up into Shin-soo’s gut, tossing him two meters. Hana was back on the warpath for Tae-do, who’d taken two steps back.
I put my hand out, black zo curling up my fingers. “Stop,” I warned her.
“You don’t know what I know,” she said, her gaze planted firmly on—
Ko-nah?
I looked over my shoulder to see the long-haired boy scowling, his breath caught in his chest. Ko-nah looked at me, then Tae-do, bewilderment obvious in his expression. He didn’t know why she was after him, either.
She hadn’t been looking at Tae-do at all; it only seemed that way since they were standing so close. What in Mun-de-Jayu did Shin-soo say to her?
Shin-soo grabbed Hana’s dobok and jerked her backwards as he declared, “Fight me!”
“Tungpah ne!” Hana screamed. She rounded her shoulders forward and flipped Shin-soo over her. He landed with a heavy thud, but rolled forward and grabbed Hana’s leg as she tried to advance on Ko-nah.
‘Mae, did you see their lips?’ I asked in my head, referencing the image of Shin-soo and Hana together in the lavender bubble of ry munje.
“Not his, only hers. She said, Kokyu, I think,” Mae replied.
Hana freed herself from Shin-soo’s grasp with a powerful kick to his face. Shin-soo’s head hit the floor, and his hand went slack. Hana dashed forward in a blur, and I put myself in her path.
I held out my arms. “Please.”
“He’s working with the enemy!” Hana screamed and pointed over my shoulder.
“Hana, you’ve won the zo challenge,” the red-robed instructor said, trying to end the disruption.
“I don’t care about the damned duel,” Hana snarled as she tried to dart around me.
“That’s quite enough!” The female instructor swirled dark purple zo-ry munje between her fingers. Cuffs appears at Hana’s wrists, and her arms stretched out wide, then slowly—against her will—pinned behind her back. The instructor pulled Hana close with a flick of her fingers.
Hana looked at me with desperation. “He’ll kill us all to get—” Hana’s eyes closed as purple mist filled her mouth and wrapped over her face. Her head lolled to the side, and she was held aloft by the munje wrapping around her neck, chest, and arms.
The red-robed instructor bowed to the students. “This concludes the duel. No winner, no points awarded.” When no one moved, she snarled, “Dismissed.”
The others moved, but I stayed. Sung-ki looked to me with a sympathy. “She’ll be okay. Infirmary. You’ll see her for lunch.”
I looked to Shin-soo and stepped around the instructors. He was shaking off the temporary knockout Hana had delivered, blinking his eyes as blood streamed from his nose. I offered him my hand. I helped Shin-soo to his feet and then pulled him close. I whispered, “What is it?”
“I’ve told you already.” He flicked my hands away and straightened his dobok, then returned to his place in Tae-do’s entourage. They walked away, but as they did, Shin-soo looked back.
‘Mae, what did I miss? What has he said?’
“He said not to mess with the Wongs. I don’t know. He hasn’t said anything else to you all year,” Mae said, flustered.
I recalled all the moments I’d seen Shin-soo. He tapped his teacup. He nodded to Ko-nah. He watched me in the hall as I defended Ko-nah from Tae-do. What does he know? What was he able to tell Hana? Working with the enemy...
The gong for the end of class rang, and I turned to see Ko-nah had already left, but Cho and Yuri waited nearby.
I joined them, shaking my head in confusion. “Mae was able to read Hana’s lips when Shin-soo spoke to her. She said Kokyu, but that was all. Then to me, he’s working with the enemy. Which enemy? Tae-do? I mean, that’s obvious. We know he’s cooperating with him—but could she mean the exchange students from Jade Fire? They come from Kokyu.”
Yuri’s brow furrowed in deep thought. “I don’t know... There’s not enough information to draw a conclusion.”
I balked. “You’re always following your instinct. You’ve always got an answer.” Not always the right answer, but Yuri was never indecisive.
“I try not to jump to conclusions when lives are on the line,” she said with a nonchalant shrug.
Cho sighed. “We’ll just have to talk with her at lunch and get the whole truth.”
The hall flooded with students as all the classrooms let out, ending our conversation. We carved our way through to our classes in contemplative quiet. Yuri and I bid Cho farewell as we moved on to the next class, En Manipulation II. Shin-soo avoided my gaze for the entirety of class, but I noticed someone else staring at him, too. One of Tae-do’s goons.
If Shin-soo knew something dangerous about Ko-nah, why hadn’t he told Min-hwan? If he knew something, why would he risk telling me? What could I do about it? And why would he ignore his own advice: Don’t mess with the Wongs?
We shaped stone during that class, sculpting simple figures, but I made very little progress due to my wandering mind. When lunch came, my gaze raked over the dining room until I spotted Hana. She was already sitting with Ko-nah, and he was explaining something with excited hand gestures. Hana was squinting, her arms crossed, but slowly she nodded.
I was anxious to get through the line, piling things mindlessly onto my tray to get to her faster. When I took my seat, she smiled at Ko-nah and said, “I’m sorry about the misunderstanding.”
I hummed in curious interest and looked between them for an explanation.
Ko-nah sighed with exhaustion. “Shin-soo’s uncle’s dojang isn’t
doing well. He’s trying to slander wansil Wong any way he can to reclaim lost students. Spreading rumors at school that spread to parents, so on and so forth. He doesn’t want to directly accuse Tae-do, the repercussions—well, you’ve seen them—so he’s coming after me. It doesn’t help that Shin-soo lost a lot of popularity after last year...” Ko-nah looked to me and said, “He’s probably trying to drag you into this to get back at you, get you punished by wansil Wong.”
“That makes sense. I’m sorry about all this,” Hana said.
I nodded, saying, “Same,” but something didn’t feel right. Hana didn’t just apologize when she was wrong. Hana’s apologies were always preceded by an ordeal of her frustrated attempts to prove herself before finally surrendering to the inevitable truth after all evidence had been reviewed and rereviewed. It could be infuriating, but she did admit defeat when it was obvious. Whatever Ko-nah had explained must’ve been sufficient, or perhaps she didn’t want to argue today.
“What was the accusation?” I asked Hana.
Ko-nah tensed and jumped in, “It’s really not important. I wouldn’t want something so slanderous traveling any further than it already has. Wansil Wong would be very disappointed in me, and that would just”—he sighed—“make it that much harder for me to earn his respect.”
I felt like a dirtbag for even asking. I knew Ko-nah was trying to be seen as an equal to wansil Wong’s other sons. Shin-soo had been petty like this in the past, and it wasn’t fair to Ko-nah if some horrible, untruthful rumor was circulating. I didn’t want to be responsible for it spreading further.
“Jiyong, I’m a little worried about your thought processes,” Mae whispered.
‘Because I have empathy for Ko-nah?’ I asked.
Mae was quiet for a moment. “I’m not detecting any ry intrusions, but you’re not being reasonable. This rumor is not a small matter.”
‘In the kingdom, rumors can cripple a business. He’s trying to protect his father,’ I fired back. She was the one being unreasonable.
“Maybe I’m wrong.”
I turned my attention toward eating as I tried not to let all the thoughts run rampant in my head. The day went on unimpeded by duels or much in the way of excitement, and I practiced mindful breathing to focus my thoughts. I was drained by dinner, but still managed to get up to Woong-ji’s workshop afterwards to do some repairs on poor Tuko.
He’d slammed into the wall hard enough to jam two of his legs, and I needed him in good working order for the next incursion.
“Working late again?” Woong-ji ask from behind me, and I jumped.
She stepped around the workbench and checked the lock on the window. She clicked it shut, and I looked back to Tuko.
“My apologies, Master. I must’ve forgotten to close the lock last night,” I said, my voice laden with guilt despite my attempts to hide it.
“You’re very clever, Jiyong, but a rotten liar. What have you been sending him out for at such an early hour?”
I sighed, my shoulders slumping. “I’m sorry, Master. I know I can trust you with the truth.”
She chuckled. “You’ll come around. Though, I’m surprised it’s taking so long. You must’ve had some rotten apprenticeships to be this wary.”
I set the tools aside and turned around to face her. She was smiling, but I could tell she felt pity. I didn’t want to get into any of my previous apprenticeships. None of them had been very good. Well, none of them but the one that turned into my last job.
I nodded. “The arborum was the only place I learned to carve a space for myself. No one looking over my shoulder, controlling my work, or telling me what to do. I was given my tools and sent off to do my job, and I did it well. It was a good job, though hard labor for very little pay.” I laughed sarcastically and said, “Seemed essential services like lumber aren’t valued quite as much as necessities like bot fighting...”
Woong-ji’s smile soured. “Yes, the world isn’t fair. It’s harsh and unforgiving. We try to make it a little better, every day.”
“You make the world better with bot fighting and booze?” I asked, incredulously.
Her expression went flat, and I knew I’d overstepped my bounds.
“Apologies, Master,” I said with a bow.
She was shaking her head with a smirk when I came back up. “There are still a great many things you don’t know, my apprentice.”
“And a great many new things I have discovered,” I said, steering the topic of conversation back on target: the truth. “That signal I told you about—the one being sent and received by those who’ve consumed the drugs, and a similar one from my mother—we found it. The other night when Tae-do chased me through the streets, we were using him to track the signal to the source. I went to investigate last night with Tuko.”
“Your range is getting quite impressive!”
I nodded absently as I conjured silvery ry and grabbed a sheet of spare parchment. I drew the design I’d seen on the side of the box and held it out to her. “Have you ever seen this?”
She scowled and squinted as she took the paper. “Can’t say that I have.”
“It was on the side of the boxes I found, and there were a lot of them. There was a metal spire built on top of the building that was acting as a ‘routing’ station, Mae says. We found the signal source through it, and we’re going out to investigate again, gather some more evidence. I feel like”—I paused and sighed, rubbing a hand over my face.
With the way Hana so easily gave up ground on the accusations Shin-soo threw at Ko-nah, I wasn’t sure if my assessment was correct. It felt like Ko-nah was involved in this whole mess with the drugs, and maybe the exchange student too, but I could’ve been seeing connections where there were none. And if the accusations were false, Ko-nah could be ostracized by his own family even more than he already was, or bring ruin to the business.
After all Hana’s unnaming proceedings, I didn’t want to have to watch another friend go through that. It was hard enough as it was to be the perfect child to a wansil. No one needed the added pressure of figuring out how to navigate losing their whole support system.
Mae allowed me to mull over the thoughts without input. I valued the silence, but sometimes I really needed confirmation I was on the right path. Then again, when she’d tried to warn me earlier, I’d rejected her input.
“I feel like I’m losing my mind,” I groaned. My shoulders drooped, and I relaxed onto the desk.
Woong-ji hummed. “You’ve taken on a lot this year. You’re only one man. Perhaps you should take a break.”
“A break,” I said, feeling the weight of everything. Every minute I wasted was another minute my mother suffered, another minute some malicious agent distributed drugs, another minute they collected information from the users for some unknown purpose.
“You’re not a machina, Jiyong. You need rest,” Mae said through the speaker, being polite to Woong-ji. We knew she could hear us chatting in my head already. Just another thing I had to worry about from strangers and these exchange third-years.
I folded forward and put my hands on my knees as I breathed. The top of my head tingled; a telltale sign I was overworked. I hadn’t stopped to listen to what my own body was trying to tell me.
“Sometimes,” Woong-ji said as she patted my shoulder, “answers come easier when you’re not looking for them.”
What if everything wasn’t connected at all? What if I was so tired and worn down, I was grasping at anything to give me relief from the pressure? It would be hard to relax with the heavy thoughts on my mind, but I could practice clearing my head and being present.
I nodded. “Rest it is.”
Chapter 26
IN WHAT FELT LIKE NO time at all, I found myself packing my backpack for the winter festival. Resting had been exactly what I needed to get my head back on straight, though I was feeling the guilt of it frequently. I had let my mind relax, ignoring urgent thoughts of the signal and everything else that was taxing me, and just liv
ed for a few days.
I had to remind myself often there was no reason to be guilty, that resting was in the service of getting to answers faster. That idea was going to take some practice—and some follow through. But now that I had rested for several days, it was time to get back on the path to answers.
Nearly time.
Hana, Yuri, Cho, and I were headed out to the winter festival together—the one I’d missed last year because I was in a coma. I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to tell them about the things I’d seen on my early morning excursion with Tuko, but today I would. Without the prying eyes and ears of Ko-nah nearby—he’d made a big show about how much he didn’t want to go to the festival with his mother—I’d be able to tell the crew everything.
It would also be an opportunity to get closer to the true source of the signal, something I’d been anxious about the entire break I’d taken. There was nothing to be done about it during the school week. The source location was too far for Tuko in his current shape. He’d need several modifications, and I wanted to scope out the target better before the next excursion.
No more surprises.
The first stop on the journey to the winter festival—after morning meditation and breakfast—was a coat shop. Cho and I had brought our winter jackets to school, but they were well past their prime. I didn’t want Hana to see my father’s ratty old thing that’d been stuffed with fiber and patched up a dozen times, anyway. With the extra funds from summer apprenticing, I bought a thick, thigh length black peacoat with six gold buttons. It was the nicest thing I’d ever owned.
Hana buttoned the front for me and smoothed out the shoulders with an appraising gaze. She stood by me as I looked in the mirror. For the first time, I looked like I belonged next to her. My arms filled out the sleeves, and the jacket was fitted across the chest. I stood taller and looked good.
Cho was able to find a coat, too, though not quite as nice as mine due to his lengthy torso. The apothecary apprenticeship he’d picked up over the summer hadn’t paid him well, but his family was better off than mine, so he got to keep all his earnings.
