[CYM] 19 – You Lost; It Seems

When he thrust, she evaded, and before he could bring his sword down again, she hit his weak spot. When his sword’s hilt was sent flying through the air, he ended up on the ground, kicking up dust. The spectators hadn’t even had a chance to settle in properly.

“Wow, he won?”

“Did Seobi lose?”

Seobi’s eyes, red with shame, glared at Beodeul as if to tear her apart.

“That brat definitely used some strange trick. He must have learned magic from his mother who sees spirits and used it on me!”

While a shaman who protected people was respected, a lesser shaman was treated like a lowly occupation. Even after being defeated by someone much smaller, he couldn’t believe it and spouted nonsense.

The blacksmith’s son, having lost his sword, tried to grab her waist with his thick arms and slam her down. She clung to him like a leech, and they both rolled on the dirt floor.

“Wow, they’re fighting. Fight!”

“Fight, fight!”

She was entangled with him like dough among the kids who were cheering and whistling. At the age of seventeen, when talk of marriage and such should be starting, she threw punches, filled only with the determination to knock this brat down, not caring about the rumours that would worry her mother.

“This beggar doesn’t know his place after being taken in... Argh!”

“Is your station so high that you get beat up by the beggar you scorn? Why carry a sword you can’t even use against the butcher’s son you look down on, huh?”

“Eh, ouch! My head! Won’t you get off? Move awa... Aaaah!”

When a middle-aged man, unable to watch any longer, grabbed the nape of her neck and separated them, the boy’s face was more damaged than hers. It was severely bruised. She felt a pang of regret for not being able to charge at him again as she saw him rubbing his blue eyes, sniffling and crying like a victim.

“Did you see him hitting that guy? He’s scary, that butcher’s son rumour must be true.”

“Isn’t he an illegitimate child?”

“My grandmother said he and his mother were abandoned and ran away.”

Whispers, scornful looks, piercing pain.

She spat at the feet of the boy who was crying like he was milking salt and turned away, promising herself never to look this way again.

No one stopped her. In the midst of it all, she left like a villain, branded as the son of a butcher who slaughters animals. Even though they all saw each other fight and exchange blows, they only cursed her.

All the way back, her anger didn’t subside. The place where she was hit hurt unbearably, but since she walked away on her own, she was the victor. There was no need to cry, even though she had won.

She couldn’t bear to go home. Her mother might have bitten her tongue in shock and collapsed. Otherwise, she might have been beaten twice or thrice more by her mother for the bruises she had received.

She stood for a while, battered by the wind on the street bathed in the sunset, then wandered aimlessly through the pathways like a vagabond. Unaware, her feet were already walking her somewhere.

“They say it’s a festival.”

It was the first time she found the streets more comforting than home.

She leaned her battered back against a pillar, warmed by the sun, when her young master approached, recognising her plight. She didn’t understand why she had crawled this far.

“And tomorrow is the last ancestral ritual, right?”

“Yes.”

“You said you’d rest today, yet here you are. But look at the state of you.”

“I rolled in the fields.”

“That’s a lie.”

Was her condition so severe that it was noticeable even through that narrow door frame? She pretended not to notice. Then, suddenly feeling a sharp sensation around her ankle, she turned quickly to find his long arm reaching out, wrapping around her injured limb.

That part. Whether she had sprained her ankle in a scuffle with the blacksmith’s son, or something had struck her foot, it was terribly painful. She had run around on an ankle she didn’t even realise was bruised and swollen.

“I fought.”

“With whom?”

“The blacksmith’s son.”

“You lost; it seems.”

His cool hand, like flowing water, gently caressed her ankle. She clenched her fist and said defiantly as if to bolster her courage,

“If I had lost to him, I wouldn’t have come here. It’s the injustice of it; I had to see it through to the end.”

The young master, without asking how or why the fight occurred, patted her ankle as if acknowledging her hardship.