Book 21 Chapter 15

What is an invalid?

-Start of deviation

The next morning. A falcon, white as snow, glided through the winds above the Temple of Heaven. It circled once more and folded its wings, plummeting to the ground with the lofty, regal majesty of one who rules the skies. At the hawk's point of departure, an equally noble person, Na Yerin, reached out.

Na Yerin pulled a small scroll from the grimoire strapped to the white hawk's leg and opened it. For a moment, a thin shadow fell across her face.

"Is this bad news?"

When asked about Yeonbi, Na Yerin shook her head.

"No, I'm just a little disappointed. It's the same old news as always, that they still haven't found the whereabouts of the Dingo lion……."

Yunbi nodded and patted Na Yerin on the shoulder.

"Don't worry, Rin, I'm sure he'll be fine!"

"Thanks, by the way, Yeonbi, have you ever seen a Dingo lion?"

Na Yerin asked, puzzled.

"Uh, me, the Dingo Lion, did you used to be in Sichuan too?"

Yunbi asked, not showing the slightest sign of agitation. It was Na Yerin who was stunned by the nonchalant response.

"No, not really, but……."

"Hmmm, but why are you asking me that all of a sudden?"

"You were talking like you knew a dingo lion earlier."

"Foot, did you? Hmm, if you're a lion of Rin, I can't wait to meet you, I'm sure you'll be fine."

It was a subtle comment, neither a yes nor a no. But thanks to the natural flow of the conversation, Na Yerin didn't notice at all.

"Thanks, that's comforting to hear you say that, and yes, I'm sure the Dingo lion will be fine, after all, you're the one who vetted him."

Na Yerin's trust in Dokgo-ryong ran deep.

"I'm so jealous that you have that much trust in Lean."

"I'm also a big believer in Yeonbi."

Yeonbi bowed slightly and replied politely.

"I am honored, my lady, and this body will serve you for life!"

Na Yerin laughed softly, and the white hawk that had settled on her shoulder rubbed its head against her face. It was a joke of its own.

"Yeonbi, kid, do you remember?"

It was a graceful-looking falcon with spotless, snow-white feathers.

"Of course. How could I forget him? Man, he's grown up, it's been so long."

Yun Bi smiled at the hawk and said hello. Bai Ning flapped her white wings and returned the greeting. Yeonbi chuckled and said.

"Man, he's gotten so much stronger, I thought he was so weak and might die soon……."

"Right? I really thought I was going to die back then… and this kid… and the Yeonbi……."

As they stared at the white falcon, a wistful feeling slowly filled their eyes.

* * *

"Minutes, lips smoothed, hair in a difficult bun, no jewelry, clothing on, all done, makeup done, okay, okay, let's get to work!"

After checking herself in the mirror, Yeonbi said, bouncing up and down in her seat.

"Why do you seem so happy lately?"

Yeonbi's head snapped up.

"Master……."

Before I knew it, the Labor Department was standing in the open doorway.

"Don't you even know the etiquette of 'announcing' when you enter a lady's room, you drunken master?"

Yeonbi screamed at me.

"Who's the lady, it's your man, decisively!"

Turo Nosabu pointed out that he's heard it all before.

"It's not fair of you to say that, when you're telling me to be a woman to the core, and now you're changing your mind, how can you be an example to others?"

The Yeonbi comment was a bit of a stretch, but logical.

"Hmmm, that pretentious tone makes me want to pump my fist in the air, but you've mastered the art of speaking with authority!"

The master sighed and said.

"Very well. By the way, why were you still a man when your makeup was done? Your silly little monologue earlier was quite troubling."

"Ugh!"

There was no excuse for that.

"The glasses you've been wearing must have cracked after being left out for a while. Disciple, shall we have another lesson? And pay you back?"

I talk about it. The history of torture under the guise of a special lesson flashed through Yeonbi's mind like a headlamp.

"No, thank you."

Yeonbi replied in a feminine voice.

"Really? That's too bad, but is something good really happening? You used to complain about not wanting to go, but now you're surprisingly enthusiastic about going to sell kamuyu?"

"Well, you're quick on the uptake.

She was unstoppable. He sighed heavily, pulling as many shadows as he could under his eyes.

"It's a good thing… Well, it's good to have fun, it makes me less irritable, and I can't stay crying like a poor lamb sold to a wicked master forever, can I?"

"Who's a bad teacher, Yon-seok, it's all for you."

"What an insensitive thing to say to a lady, ahhhhhh!"

Yunbi squirmed and wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. She was a pitiful girl, but Nosabu swatted her hand away like a fly with eyes that saw things he couldn't.

"Go away, go away, go away. Earn your keep today."

"Alas, even today this poor girl has to bat for her master to earn a living…… blackblackblack."

Once again, I wipe my tears with my sleeve.

"How abominable you are in that state, pupil! Why don't you go away cold, while this master's kindness soothes your trembling fists?"

"Okay, mask, mask!"

He carried a bag of gold larger than his body, and Yun Yi left Chu Yun.

"And so it was that the girl trudged down the blistered mountain path on her blistered feet, carrying gold weighing as much as a thousand muscles, to carry the handcuffs of an incompetent drunken old man."

Recite the apologia in an emotional voice.

Puck!

"Ouch!"

The master is a hundred paces away, so where did this honey chestnut come from?

"You never know when or where something will fly at you, so be quiet on the mountain paths and keep your mouth shut, disciple!"

The master, who must be the culprit, says something behind my back, pretending to be concerned.

'White bee balm… What a master!

I couldn't let my guard down.

Charang, charang, charang.

Listening to the sound of the minis, fresher than spring water, the young girl, Lin, rested her chin on the window sill and stared out the window at her backyard. With one hand clutched tightly around the red towel she'd tucked into the crack in the window earlier, Lin let out a sigh.

A playful swallow flits from branch to branch, seemingly out of sight, in a pear blossom tree, its white petals fluttering in the breeze. Today's Yeonbi was dancing just like that. Lighthearted but not frivolous, colorful but not dizzying. When the wind picks up, the petals flutter, and when the wind dies down, the swallows crush the branches.

Suddenly, a gust of wind picked up, causing the ripples in the petals to shine like stars, and a swallow flew up into the sky on a petal.

"Ha… um, huh?"

Sighing once more, Lin was suddenly taken aback. Just as the dance was reaching its climax, a flying swallow, or rather, Yan Fei, launched himself through the window, his body still floating, and once again bounced off the ground with a silver spindle, kicking lightly at the overhangs of each floor as he flew like a swallow.

"Joe, watch out……!"

She stuttered, afraid of falling. Leap after leap, Yanbi looked up at Lin and smiled, the warm sunlight glinting in her eyes and giving them a mysterious glow.

They were a deep, dark, maroon color in the dark, but in the sunlight, they glowed a cool, transparent gold. Their first encounter was in the shade, so she didn't notice, but over the next three or four encounters, she realized he had unusual eyes.

"It's like a tiger's eye stone……!"

the first time he'd heard it, he'd shakily told Rin: "I'm not sure I'm ready for this.

"Oh, this? Hmm… side effect, side effect. It's like this now, but it'll go back to normal at some point."

"But… it's pretty?"

"Ah, ahhhh, ha. Thanks for comforting me, Rin. Hmph."

After seeing Yunbi cry so hard, Lin avoided talking about snow from then on. Apparently, Yunbi herself had a trepidation about those piercing eyes.

Lin didn't know it, but the light in her eyes was a transitional side effect of her mastery of the Spirit Core Technique. Of course, it wasn't easy to enter the transitional stage so early, and it was only through the use of the Puppet Ginseng, his self-proclaimed genius, and the presence of Nosabu, who whipped him into a hell of a training regimen, that he was able to make such rapid progress.

But, as was his master's wont, he already recognized the eyes as an obstacle to be overcome. To the uninitiated, they might be beautiful, but to him, as an untrained martial artist, they were a stigma that marked him as an 'incomplete being'. Regardless, Lin, who didn't know the story, felt as if she were being sucked in every time she met Hoanseok's eyes.

Tadac.

With light footsteps, he climbed onto the window sill in a shovelful of snow. As she sat with her back to the sun, her eyes returned to their abysmal depths. Once inside the room, she greeted him with a cheerful voice.

"Hey, that's it for today's exercise! Hmmm, by the way, you've gotten prettier in the last few days, where are you, look at your cheeks?"

Yun Bi lightly cupped both of Lin's cheeks in his hands. Lin remained still, feeling the soft warmth of her hands. Strangely enough, she didn't find his touch all that unwelcome. Her words felt different from everyone else's, like the difference between a casual "You look pretty, don't you?" and a smirk and "Yes, you look pretty, kkkkkkkk……".

"Hooray. The wounds seem to be healing up, and now that I look at it, Rin's quite pretty too, huh huh huh."

Yunbi, who had been celebrating as if he had made a great discovery, talking about how those who knew Lean in its original form would snicker, suddenly stopped.

"But! We still have a long way to go."

His eyes scanned Lin's form with a piercing intensity.

"How to get there?"

"Yeah. Again, it's the eyes and the hair and the blood color."

His sunken eyes, graying hair, and pallid complexion were still there, but the changes in his eyes hadn't gotten any better since he'd lost his vision.

"Probably because she's in the corner of the room every day. Come to think of it, isn't she frustrating? I wouldn't last three days in a room with her."

"Well, not really."

It was a nonchalant response. Yunbi shook his head. Apparently, he had been confined to his room for quite some time, and now he was so used to it that he didn't feel any frustration at all. Whenever he returned from a visit, it would be three days, two at the earliest, and a red towel would be hanging in the window.

Then why is she in the corner of the room, staring at a pitiful red towel? As Yan Bi looked at Lin's pale face, it suddenly dawned on her.

"Are you, like, scared to go outside?"

"……."

The way he clenched his jaw, I knew I had hit the nail on the head.

"Gee, that's a shame, there's so much fun and good stuff out there."

"But there are people… there are a lot of people out there."

It turns out that Lin suffered because people's hearts flowed through him.

"What about places without people?"

"Is there such a place…?"

That's a pretty skeptical counter-question.

"There are a few places where there are so few people that Lean doesn't mind. Want me to take you to the nearest one? The back mountains, for starters. What do you think?"

The closest mountain to the back of Cheonhyangru is definitely Amisan, which is quite high and rugged for a back mountain.

"But my dad said……."

Rin trailed off.

"Oh, you mean the old man."

Through a combination of circumstances, Yunbi knew that Lin's father was the old man she'd seen before. She hadn't asked him who he was or how old he was, because everyone was shy, but it was a suspicious father-daughter relationship nonetheless.

For a girl that young to have a father who is at least a hundred years her junior, there's something about her that reeks of the forbidden. And for Lin, there's something about her that reeks of domestic violence and child abuse. This is why I have to bury my curiosity for fear of saying the wrong thing and opening old wounds.

Still, the "old man" Yunbi met didn't seem evil by any means. He was more like a doting father worried about his daughter.

"Well, I suppose Rin's dad would be worried."

Rin nodded wordlessly.

"But I think you'd be worried if she was locked in the corner, right? Parents worry about this and worry about that."

"Is that so?"

Lin asked in a weak voice.

"Absolutely, so she just has to choose which one is better for her, and if she can't do anything because she says, 'My parents are worried about me,' then that's a lost cause, because at the end of the day, that's what parents really want, for their kids to do well."

I hadn't really thought about it, but from what I've heard, Yeonbi makes sense.

"What's good for me……."

"Yeah, well, here it's either go to the back or stay in the corner."

"There are no people there?"

I double-checked my anxiety. Longan's powers hadn't returned, so he wasn't as defenseless as before, but he was still afraid of meeting people.

"Well, the place we're going is close to my house, but I've rarely met anyone there, and I'm sure there will be people on the road before we get into the mountains, but I've got a plan to keep Rin out of trouble."

Lin asked curiously.

"Yield's house, so you have parents and other family members?"

"Because it's family……."

Suddenly, Fuel's eyes seemed to darken even more.

"My parents died a long time ago, and all I have at home is my lazy master, eh."

It was a light, playful sigh. But Lin could tell that the sigh carried an unusual heaviness. Lin panicked. For her, parents were the last refuge, the last bastion in a harsh world. Especially if it weren't for her father, Nabaxian, she would have already been torn apart by the greed of the world.

She couldn't imagine being in that predicament without both of her parents.

"Go, go, mountain!"

Maybe it was because it was all he could think of to say, or maybe it was because he wanted to comfort her. Either way, Yunbi's eyes sparkled with life.

"Oh, really?"

A bright smile, bright eyes. That's a much better look for Yeonbi, Lin thought.

"Great, then save your stamina for tomorrow morning, ho-ho-ho."